I Thee Wed (12 page)

D
USK found Orion in the laboratory, hard at work appeasing Sir Geoffrey's quest for everlasting fame and scientific accolade.

The lanterns were lighted, casting bright, efficient glow. Silence reigned. His concentration was absolute.

Yet Orion found the laboratory far too quiet. Oddly, the very silence was distracting to him now. He missed the rare but peaceful moments of working side by side with Francesca, his thoughts keeping time with the even sound of her breathing and the rustling of her gown.

However, he did manage to get a great portion of his work done and had at last eliminated the final solvents from the experiment. On the shelf of potentials now stood nine bottles, arranged neatly in a line.

He was ready to begin the next stage of the experiment.

Unfortunately, he had no notion of what ought to be done next. He was fairly certain Sir Geoffrey didn't, either—hence the man's avoidance of his own lab!

Orion leaned his hips back against the marble-topped laboratory table and regarded the single shelf of bottles with weary indecision.

I wish Francesca were here
.

Which was ridiculous. She could offer him no new knowledge of chemistry, no insights into botanical compounds, no fact he did not already know.

I want to talk to her about it.

I want to listen to her voice and have her laugh at me and say radical things that make me see the world differently
.

Blinking, he rubbed his hands over his face. Where was she?

He lifted his head sharply.
Oh no
.

He'd matched up the subversive with the barmy, the rebellious with the cracked. He'd unthinkingly sent the most outrageously imaginative woman he'd ever met into the center of all things mad, into the seething den of chaos itself.

Worthington House.

What have I done?

*   *   *

F
RANCESCA STIRRED THE
giant pot of tomato sauce, talking all the while.

“But I found Ophelia to be more of a place marker of a character,” she said to charming Archie Worthington, who was nodding in agreement. “She was the object of desire, instead of a real woman.”

“Yes, thank you. That onion is perfectly chopped,” she said to lovely Mrs. Philpott. She turned and waved a saucy spoon at Castor Worthington. “Have you considered the elastic properties of the boiled sap of the rubber tree, which was my uncle's previous field of study? I think it would help reduce the noise of the turning gears, don't you?”

With that, she plunked the spoon down upon the stove and
went to hover over where silent Lysander sat peeling potatoes with intense concentration. Without speaking, she scooped up his work so far and left him to his efforts with a simple pat on the shoulder.

Attie sat on a high stool at the end of the scarred kitchen worktable, industriously chopping basil. Actually, she was obliterating it with enthusiasm, so Francesca mentally changed her menu to include a nice pesto.

Stately Iris drifted through the kitchen like a lacy wisp of smoke, bestowing beatific smiles upon her children and husband. “Oh, how wonderful. Goodness, aren't you gifted?” And for Francesca's sauce? “Heavens, darling, that's simply divine!”

Francesca smiled to herself and went back to stirring. Iris's uncomplicated support might not be very discerning, but a mother's love was pure and unconditional, was it not?

For the first time since she had left Bologna, Francesca felt surrounded by family. For the first time in an even longer time, she felt surrounded by acceptance.

My journey is done. I have found my people
.

Except that they weren't, not really. But they were Orion's people, and Attie's people, and from what she could gather, they were also Mr. Button's people.

If a person could be judged by the people he surrounded himself with, then Orion must be an amazing human being, even aside from his formidable mind.

Then again, he'd left this warm and wonderful place for the cold, efficient environs of Blayne House—and worse, he actually seemed to prefer it!

Attie brought Francesca the cutting board with the basil, which had been reduced to a pulpy smear. Francesca smiled at her. “That's marvelous! And so consistently cut!” She set the younger girl to planing the hard cheese. Note to her future self: Attie's help should be saved for when she needed her ingredients disintegrated.

“Rion, dearest, you've come home at last!” Iris trilled over the chaos.

Francesca looked up from her pot to see Orion's lean form filling the doorway of the main kitchen. His dark gaze was fixed upon her like a hunter who had at last spotted his prey. She smiled at him broadly and without repentance. It was his own fault that she'd stayed for dinner. He ought to have suspected what would happen when she finally found people who liked to eat!

“Rion!” Attie popped up and ran to her newly arrived brother. “Mrs. Philpott gave over the kitchen to Francesca, and we are having pasta Bolognese!” She grabbed Orion's hand and began to drag him toward the stove. “I chopped basil. And Chessa helped Cas solve his noise-reduction problem! Didn't she, Cas?”

Castor nodded to his brother. “It's a very good idea.” He turned his sketch sideways. “See? If I add a disc of the boiled rubber here, and another here, it should absorb the worst of the vibration.”

Orion's dark gaze left Francesca's long enough to scan the drawing. “Yes, I see.” He looked back at Francesca, his blue eyes like windows of night sky. “Francesca has a way of seeing right to the center of a problem.”

Francesca's heart pounded. He so rarely paid compliments. That was one thing that differed from the rest of the Worthington clan. Orion held approval back like a miser—yet when he gave it, it seemed to mean so much more.

She looked away from his intense scrutiny.
Mind your spoon, Chessa. You're splashing!

“I came to take Miss Penrose back to Blayne House,” Orion stated calmly into the din. Silence fell at once.

Francesca lifted her chin and kept stirring. “You and what platoon, may I ask?”

He came closer. “You have to go home.”

I am home.
But if she said that out loud, it would sound
silly, and then he would say something sensible and painfully accurate and truthful. So she swallowed hard and put the spoon down carefully, then turned to him as she wiped her hands on her apron.

“Give me one good reason why I should.” She waved a hand at the people filling the kitchen, people who crowded around the worktable just to be together, and to get to know her. It could not be more dismally different at Blayne House.

He advanced two more steps until he stood over her, close enough to touch. He gazed down at her as if they were the only two people in the room. “I would like for you to return to Blayne House,” he said, his voice deepening, “because if you do not, I will miss you.”

Oh. My. Heavens.
She could not tear her gaze from his. Were her knees actually going weak? Over the pounding in her ears, Francesca heard Iris sigh and Archie chuckle. Even Lysander paused in his dutiful peeling to wait for her reply.

A deep breath restored the starch to her knees. She smiled merrily at Orion. “Well, then, all the more reason to sit down to supper sooner. There is celery that needs chopping, and I believe you are just the man for the job.”

*   *   *

F
OR MOST OF
his life, Orion had eaten at the long table in the cluttered dining room at Worthington House.

So why was this night so different?

His father sat at the head of the table, as Archie always did if he could be pulled from his lifelong study of the works of Shakespeare. At the other end, Iris sat—unless she was perched on Archie's lap, being fed tidbits of the meal as if the two of them were alone.

Perhaps they were, alone together in a dreamworld of their own making.

However, tonight they were both present and fully engaged with the rest of the party. Iris was perched on Archie's knee
to free a chair for Francesca, but her eyes were bright and sparkling, instead of vague and dreamy.

Archie seemed enraptured with Francesca, and he laughed aloud at a story she told about the time she tried to spice up Sir Geoffrey's stewed prunes with a bit of cinnamon—except that in her hurry to be stealthy, she mistakenly loaded the dish with ground red pepper!

The Worthingtons did not know how vicious Sir Geoffrey's temper could be, so they only laughed at Francesca as she acted out Sir Geoffrey fanning his mouth, trying to call for water. Orion found himself wondering what form his mentor's vengeance had taken. He would wager that it was not at all amusing.

Francesca did not belong at Blayne House. If anything, she belonged here, where all eyes were brightened by her laughter, and every speck of her cooking had been heartily eaten—yes, Orion had helped himself to thirds, beating his brother Castor out with a two-second lead.

Then he had shared his spoils with Attie, who grew so quickly that she remained too thin. It had hurt to lose even a spoonful of noodles in thick, spicy red sauce and the balls of spiced beef that had been stewed in it.

Archie had dusted off an ancient bottle of red wine, and even Attie had enjoyed a taste. Francesca had pronounced it to be absolutely terrible. She drank two glasses.

It seemed everyone had a story they wanted to share with Francesca as well, and Orion heard some of them for the first time. He could not help but wonder, when had these things happened to his family? Where had he been at the time?

“You were in your study.”

“You had your nose in a book.”

“You told me to go away before I contaminated your samples.”

Francesca defended him against his family's all-too-prompt responses, laughing all the while. “Orion is a genius—
you should see him in the laboratory. He was born to do research!”

Then his family wanted to hear all about his work. Orion looked at Francesca, but she only smiled and waved him onward. Slowly, keeping his explanations simple, he told his family about the competition to discover a method to extract compounds from plants. He waited for them to become confused or bored, but they truly listened to him.

Francesca helped, directing his story with anecdotes of her own and recounting how she'd had to teach him how to use the flame bowls. Attie chimed in, giving a blow-by-blow account of the Great Rabbit Dispute.

Orion realized, somewhere between glass wicks that wouldn't burn and rabbits named after poets, that he'd never enjoyed a dinner with his family more. And, from the looks of engaged wonder in their eyes, neither had they.

Had it been his doing, that distance? Had he become so withdrawn from his fellow Worthingtons that they no longer bothered trying to reach him?

Deep down, Orion loved them. He knew they loved him in return.

But tonight, for the first time in memory, he felt understood by them. And bright-eyed, laughing Francesca was the reason why.

Like a song, or a perfect passage in a book, or the first words one understood in learning a new language, Francesca opened doors with her lively interest and her engaging nature.

She was disheveled from her long day of chasing rabbits, fending off knife-wielding cooks, and rolling meatballs—but Orion found himself mesmerized by her effortless beauty. She had a nicely shaped face and her figure was certainly marvelous, but it was the spice and flame within her that brought out the best—and worst!—in everyone she encountered. She was a human barometer of character.

In the company of the Worthingtons, she brought out their laughter and their loving natures. But with the occupants of
Blayne House, Francesca seemed to bring out only anger and impatience. Perhaps that did not reflect badly on her at all. Perhaps it meant precisely what Orion had been avoiding acknowledging for the past several days—that Sir Geoffrey was not a good man.

Castor elbowed Orion out of his reverie. “She's marvelous, Rion! Look, I think Lysander is almost smiling!”

Orion looked around the table at his mad, odd, irritating, chaotic family with the lively, shimmering, annoying Francesca at the very center and found that he was almost smiling as well.

T
HE next day of Orion's stay in Blayne House began with all the usual swift efficiency. Orion found his breakfast on the side table in his room, eggs and kippers, this time along with some breathtakingly light crumpets that tasted of basil and honey. If Orion closed his eyes in silent ecstasy as he chewed them, there was no one to know.

His clothing had been brushed and laid out for him by the stealthy staff of Blayne House, and the pitcher on his dressing table held steaming water for his washing. It was astonishing how quickly one became accustomed to such luxury. Orion approved of comfort, if it allowed him more time for science.

He ate and bathed quickly, except for some secret momentary savoring of Francesca's baking, for he had an appointment with Sir Geoffrey downstairs.

Once again, Orion was made to wait upon guests. However, this time he did not mind so much being kept from the laboratory, for Sir Geoffrey had invited a fellow scientist to call. Orion, after guessing that Sir Geoffrey would don the Coat, as Francesca called it, brushed off his best deep blue
surcoat and turned up dutifully in the foyer a few minutes early.

“Ah, Worthington! Your timing is, as always, impeccable.”

Orion turned to greet his mentor. Sir Geoffrey was descending the stairs with a stately lack of speed. As Orion was used to a much more gravitational rumble of his brothers' and sisters' feet, Orion admired the older man's thoughtful pace. In the midst of musing that it might add a little something to his own stateliness, Orion caught sight of Sir Geoffrey's white-knuckle grip upon the railing.

Orion looked more sharply at Sir Geoffrey's face for signs of strain. A line of perspiration droplets, no larger than grains of millet, had popped out upon the marble pallor of the man's brow and upper lip.

Concerned, Orion hesitated. If Sir Geoffrey wished for assistance, he possessed an entire household of people simply panting to open his door or sweep a pebble from his path. Ergo, Sir Geoffrey did not wish such a fuss to be made over his possible ailment.

Ordinarily, Orion felt entirely comfortable ignoring the needs of others—especially when the heat of the experimental process bloomed in the laboratory. However, he could not help but hear a voice in his mind telling him to give the man a blasted hand! The voice had an Italian lilt.

Sir Geoffrey simply waved him off and made his way shakily to the parlor. Pennysmith appeared within seconds with a steaming pot of tea and a fine china cup. Just one. It seemed that Orion had already had all the tea he was going to receive from the staff today!

The tea seemed to do the job, for a few moments later Sir Geoffrey was his old self as Pennysmith announced the arrivals.

“Dr. Darwin, sir, with his grandson.”

Sir Geoffrey bounced to his feet.

“Ah! Erasmus!” He stepped forward and clasped hands with a florid, jowly septuagenarian who sported an outmoded
brown coat and a powdered wig from a previous decade. Then he glanced down at the small boy at Dr. Darwin's side. “And this must be young Charlie.” This was uttered with somewhat less enthusiasm. “He's grown a bit since I last saw him.”

“Young Charlie” looked to be six or seven years of age, an appealing, brown-haired cherub, but he was old enough to narrow his eyes in obvious annoyance at being spoken above. Orion mused upon what Attie would do if subjected to such a slight. Then he fought back a shudder.

Sir Geoffrey turned to beckon at Orion, clicking his fingers, rather like summoning the dog. Perhaps it was having Attie on his mind, but Orion had to fight back a twitch of annoyance as well. However, he managed to step forward and bow politely to Dr. Darwin. He knew the man's reputation as a physician and philosopher. Although Orion found questions of the meaning of life uninteresting, he did find medicine fascinating.

However, once introduced, Orion was dismissed, as was Young Charlie. Sadly, Orion was not ordered to go where he wished to go, the laboratory. Instead, Sir Geoffrey went to the door and spoke a word to the hovering Pennysmith.

In seconds, Judith appeared—and she was dressed to go out in a walking gown and spencer, her bonnet strings already tied.

“Ah, my dear!” Sir Geoffrey greeted her expansively, as if he'd not ignored her during the previous hours of the day. “You look lovely. Are you here to steal Mr. Worthington away?”

Judith gazed evenly at Orion, though she spoke to her father. “I thought he might enjoy the walk to the tobacconist's shop. I want to get you some more of that African blend you like so much, Papa.”

“Lovely! What a thoughtful girl you are!”

Judith seemed entirely unperturbed by Sir Geoffrey's obvious, to Orion, falsification of extreme affection. Orion had the feeling that it happened to her often. His own family was
highly affectionate, sometimes annoyingly so—but it was always entirely sincere. What must it be like for a daughter to experience such a thing only when her father found it socially useful?

For the first time, Orion found himself wondering what was truly going on behind Miss Judith Blayne's impassive beauty.

He bowed. “Thank you, Miss Blayne. I should enjoy a walk.” There, even Elektra could not find fault with that! As he made his way from the room, he took a moment to bend down to whisper in Young Charlie's ear.

“There are rabbits in the back garden. Take the path all the way, then follow the wall to your right.”

Then he took his hat from Pennysmith's ready hand, although he'd not yet asked for it, and offered Judith his arm. Miss Penrose was nowhere in sight, so it seemed this was meant to be an exclusive stroll.

It hardly seemed necessary. The amount of time he would spend away from the laboratory itched at him, but Sir Geoffrey wished him to walk, so he would walk.

As they left, Pennysmith moved to close the door on the conversation between Sir Geoffrey and Dr. Darwin.

“Erasmus, you must take a look at my notes! The development of my process is going very well, indeed—”

The door clicked shut on further words, so Orion did not get to hear Sir Geoffrey tell Dr. Darwin about Orion's own contribution to the progress. Which Sir Geoffrey would doubtless do.

Eventually.

*   *   *

C
HARLIE SLID A
glance toward the two older men, then ducked out through the glass garden doors of the drawing room and into the sunlight. Rabbits were more interesting than stuffy old men talking about Plato and such. Charlie already knew more about the Greek philosophers than anyone
needed to. Dusty dead thoughts weren't nearly as much fun as living, breathing animals!

He wandered happily down the path, passing the rose beds and the croquet lawn, though he did linger at the large circular fountain. He dabbled his fingers into the stream of water pouring from stone jars that were balanced in the hands of marble ladies who ought to put on more clothes.

The formal gardens began to turn a bit more workaday. First, the sculpted beds gave way to a cutting garden where the flowers for the house were grown. In the center of the practical rows of gladiolas and poppies, there stood a woven grass basket on a stump—a bee skep. Charlie spent a happy ten minutes watching the honeybees. The fuzzy things were so occupied with the business of gathering pollen that he could bend to watch from inches away, the tip of his nose almost touching the petals.

“Pollen basket,” he whispered to himself, naming the parts of the bee. “Mandible. Antennae. Pro . . . prob . . .
proboscis
.” It was all most absorbing.

Bees, however, could not be cuddled. Rabbits could.

Back on the path, Charlie stuck his hands deep in his pockets and dreamed of having his own rabbits—and goats, and horses, and maybe even an elephant. His current ambition was to be a keeper at the Royal Menagerie, but Grandpapa scoffed at the idea of working with one's hands.

Charlie didn't know why, since physicians used their hands all the time, poking and prodding at people.

People, Charlie had decided, long ago when he was five years old, were boring.

He reached the end of the path and turned right, because he knew all about left and right, then followed the wall. As the tall man had promised, there were rabbits there! Hutches full of them, row upon row, soft and fluffy, hopping with long ears and tufted tails, and all different kinds, too! Charlie had never known rabbits to come in so many colors!

They came to him readily, pressing tender noses into the
holes in the wire to sniff at his fingertips. Charlie looked around, but he was all alone with a wealth of bunnies to cuddle. Surely no one would mind if he took out just one?

He opened a cage and reached within. The gentle fuzzy creatures did not flee his hand but in fact approached him. He could not resist lifting one into his arms, although he did remember to push the cage door closed again.

Rabbits were delightful. Rabbits were lovely. He promptly decided that they were his new best animal, for he'd been favoring cats for two whole weeks in a row and it was time to move on. The rabbit settled comfortably into the curve of one arm. Charlie thought then that two rabbits would be far better than just one. He reached for the door to the hutch again.

“I wouldn't if I were you.”

Charlie stopped short and clutched “his” bunny close. Standing on the path along the wall was a girl, a big girl, the kind of girl who was almost a lady but not yet.

Except she didn't look like a lady. Charlie gawked. She was wearing a faded, too-short dress over pegged knee breeches, topped with a boys' coat. She even had a boys' cap on her head, like his, but it looked oddly stuffed and rounded, as if it were very full of hair.

Amber red fringe poked out from the sides of the cap. She was skinny and freckled, and stood with her bony arms folded as she scowled at him.

Charlie decided that her oddness negated her authority somewhat. He lifted his chin and stiffened his knees. “Why should I do as you say?”

She unfolded her arms and put her hands on her narrow hips. “Go ahead, then. Don't let me stop you. But it's a downward spiral, ending in chaos and mayhem. I should know. I let them all out yesterday.” She went to the side of one of the hutches and stuck her fingers through the wire to caress a very nice black-and-white bunny. “Herbert was almost killed.”

Charlie gulped. He didn't want any of the bunnies to get
hurt. He clutched the one in his arms a little more tightly. “Very well, then. I shall learn from your mistake. Only one bun—rabbit at a time.”

Satisfied, she nodded. “I'm Attie, by the way. I am Francesca Penrose's laboratory assistant, and we are studying Lamarckism. Who are you?”

Charlie was fully occupied with petting his new friend. “I am Charles Erasmus Darwin. I'm a genius.”

“Me, too.” Attie snorted. “So what? You can't throw a rock without hitting a genius around here.”

Charlie smiled to himself. She was funny. He'd never met a funny genius before. Most of them were terribly stuffy and boring.

“They look hungry,” she said. “I'll be right back.”

She ran like a boy, too, with long skinny legs whisking rapidly through the overgrown lawn by the wall.

Charlie couldn't wait until he got tall and skinny and could run that fast, instead of plump and short and always out of breath.

The girl flew back to the rabbit yard. In one fist she clutched a handful of fresh radishes with their greens still attached. Clumps of black soil dropped from them as she shook them out.

“Here.” She gave him one for the rabbit that he held. Then she distributed the rest among the hutches, although he noticed that she gave most to the cage that held Herbert.

Charlie peered at the very fresh radish that his bunny was crunching. Its bright leafy greens looked familiar. “Did you
steal
these from the vegetable garden?” he asked in horror.

She looked at him for a long moment while the black-and-white rabbit nibbled at her fingertips. “You are not the usual genius. All the ones I know are very curious and rebellious, and nothing gets in their way.”

Charlie felt obscurely ashamed of his own law-abiding disposition, although at home it brought much praise.

“I am not always so obedient,” he protested. “I took an
extra sweet bun yesterday, when the governess wasn't watching.” It sounded silly when he said it out loud, but his heart had pounded and he'd felt rather guilty afterward.

But the wondrous red-haired girl did not laugh. She nodded. “Extra pastries are a perfectly acceptable beginning,” she stated seriously. “Still, perhaps something with a bit more scope next time.”

Charlie looked down at his bunny, astounded by the casual hint of incipient crime in her words.

However, he had recently come to the conclusion that he was more intelligent than most of the people he encountered, even his grandfather's cronies. With this realization, the seeds of rebellion, if not actually planted, had already been scattered upon the ground.

This Attie person's casually revolutionary nature was merely a bit of strategically applied fertilizer.

So it was not very difficult at all for Charlie to follow her into the forbidden delights of Sir Geoffrey Blayne's famous lab when she scooped up his rabbit to tuck it back into its hutch and said, “Everyone is busy. Let's go look at the laboratory!”

She was wonderful! And he thought her gangling limbs and glowing freckles were the most beautiful things he'd ever seen!

As he followed her long strides with his own short, pattering steps, it occurred to him that he liked her a lot more than he liked most people. Maybe it was because she seemed kind of like an animal to him. Or another genius.

Or maybe both.