I Thee Wed (7 page)

Brushing off the shiver that went through her at the notion, Francesca led the way to baked confections and, she hoped, a few more carefully extracted details about the mysterious Mr. Orion Worthington.

F
RANCESCA was allowed to use the laboratory for only a few hours a day, midafternoon, while Sir Geoffrey read over his notes in his study. This, she had learned, was apparently the scientific term for “napping,” for his sonorous snores could be heard through half of Blayne House.

After feeding Attie, she had spent an amusing half hour introducing her to the specimens housed in the back garden and explaining the research. Then she had shown the child a safer entry through the cellar and, after exacting a promise that Attie would not use the tree unless absolutely necessary, she'd sent the girl on her way and headed happily to the laboratory.

Now Francesca stood at the smaller wooden laboratory table that her uncle had reluctantly turned over to her for her work. Unlike the pristine, three-inch-thick sanded marble slabs that covered the other two larger tables, her bare wooden worktable was scarred by years of dissections and blackened by decades of scorching from burner stands.

However, she'd known when to accede with dignity and
had fully taken over her little corner of the lab. The charts she'd drawn that tracked her research were pinned on both walls, and her notes were neatly stacked at the back of her table, held down with a chunk of Italian marble taken from her family's courtyard paving.

It was a practical way to keep her notes pinned down when someone opened the laboratory door, for her table stood directly in the draft, and she liked the way the golden warmth of Italy shimmered from the stone, even in gray, rainy England. If she kept a beaker filled with flowers on her laboratory table, it was only to test their viability as possible food for her specimens, or so she informed Sir Geoffrey when he gazed disdainfully at them.

As if an appreciation for the beauty of nature made her less of a scientist!

As she worked, she heard the door to the laboratory open behind her. Without turning, she knew it was the new assistant, Mr. Worthington. Perhaps it was intuition, or maybe she noticed something special about his step, or it could be that she could see his tall shadow fill the door reflected in the copper housing of the distillation device next to her.

He ducked slightly when he entered. It wasn't quite necessary, for the doors were nearly seven feet in height. It spoke more of a lifetime of gawky stature, which warmed her thoughts to him considerably, or at least to the gangling boy he must have been.

Then the rectangle of outside brightness disappeared as the door latch clicked shut once more. She was alone in the laboratory with him.

By some arbitrary and incomprehensible British social custom, it was likely inappropriate for them to be alone in the laboratory together—a young man and an unmarried young woman, as if in staid British minds, there might immediately ensue a riot of lascivious behavior, unleashed by the lack of proper supervision!

Francesca rolled her eyes at the oddness of English
Society and turned her attention back to examining her specimen as she tried mightily to dispel the images that the thought of “lascivious behavior” had planted in her mind.

“What are you doing, Miss Penrose?”

Although his tone seemed genuinely curious, Francesca stiffened. “I am documenting traits of this specimen, in order to chart the biological repetitions through generations.”

“Ah.”

This time his voice came from just over her right shoulder. Now she could feel him there as well, the heat of his body warming her where she had not realized she'd been chilled. His height allowed him to look down at the top of her head, and at what her hands were doing.

He went on. “Documenting traits looks rather like petting a bunny.”

Francesca looked down at her hands, which had begun to stroke the young black-and-white rabbit soothingly, although the creature itself did not seem at all alarmed.

Are you soothing the rabbit or yourself?

Fine. So Mr. Worthington managed to set off a few female-response triggers. What of it? She was a young, healthy person, at the beginning of her prime reproductive years. It was only natural that she should be physically aware of young, healthy male persons in her near vicinity!

“Affection makes them easier to handle,” she pointed out coolly. “Otherwise I should have a much harder time getting my hands on the new litters.” Lifting her chin, she scooped up Herbert—er, her specimen!—and turned on Mr. Worthington. “I suppose you are opposed to the theories of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck?”

He frowned down at her thoughtfully. Heavens, he was handsome! The light from the great tall windows made his cheekbones and jaw look as if they were cut from fine marble. His bone structure would be an Italian sculptor's dream. She had seen Michelangelo's
David
. It was a heart-wrenchingly beautiful sculpture of a perfect young
man.

Yet,
David
would have disappeared next to Mr. Orion Worthington!

But that was simply her instinctive female response talking. Symmetry of features and intensity of the coloration of irises of the eyes—those were all just inherited traits, not earned and not worth more than any finely shaped hound or filly.

Or stallion . . .

He was talking to her now. She forced herself not to relish the way the deepness of his voice resonated through her body and to listen to his words. Of course, almost immediately she regretted giving him her attention.

“As it happens, I don't think very highly of Lamarckism.” His tone was dismissive. “The entire concept that we are all just a jumbled mix of our parents' physical traits—”

“And personalities,” she corrected automatically, her ire rising.

“And personalities,” he allowed, though his frown deepened, “is incompatible with the ideal of the individuality of man.”

“And woman,” she prompted.

He tilted his head, as if puzzled by her addendum. “Yes, of course. And woman.”

Francesca gazed up at Mr. Worthington while cradling the bunny Herbert—er, the Laporidae specimen—in her arms. Was the man before her handsome? Most certainly. But lest she forget, he was also so very arrogant! “You do not think studying inherited traits is worthwhile science?”

“Science is discovery. Knowledge. What you are doing is no more than counting bunny toes.”

She sniffed. “Tell me, Mr. Worthington, what study are you engaged in that is so very important?”

“I—rather, Sir Geoffrey is trying to separate alkaloid compounds from plants using solvents.”

She tilted her head. “Why?”

He blinked. The reason was so obvious that for a moment he didn't know what to say. “Because . . . because no biologist has ever managed to do it!”

“So, say you managed to separate the compounds. You stand in the center of the laboratory”—she pointed to a spot on the floor—“with a beaker of nice, pure compounds in your hand.”

Orion frowned. “Yes,” he agreed cautiously.

“What is it for? What are you going to do with it? Is it meant to be a medicine? To be a poison? To shine shoes?” She folded her arms and glared at him. “What good is knowledge without action? Pure research without higher goals amounts to selfishness. What use is a trained mind if not to better the world?”

He sputtered. “Knowledge betters the world!”

She spread her hands. “Yet, how will separating plant compounds help mankind?”

He narrowed his eyes. “How does counting bunny toes help mankind?”

Oh, the gloves were off now! Her eyes narrowed. “Your hair curls. Does your father's hair curl?”

His eyes narrowed. “By chance, yes.”

“You are tall. Is your father tall?”

His jaw worked. “Many men are tall.”

“Your eyes are blue.”
Like twilight in deep summer . . .
She shook off the distraction. “I'll wager that your mother has blue eyes, but your father has brown.”

He looked startled. “How did you know that?”

Little Attie had told her, when Francesca had grilled her about her own physical traits, but she was enjoying his discomfiture too much to admit it now. So she merely smiled archly. “Science,” she pointed out, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

She would, of course, explain herself at some later date. Probably, anyway. She might forget.

He recovered quickly enough on his own. “There are only
a limited number of eye colors in all of humanity. They are bound to repeat, even when randomized.”

She shook her head. “Nothing is random, Mr. Worthington. The constellations hold their patterns as they move across the sky. All cherry blossoms have five petals. We are indeed a jumble of inherited traits—” She held up a finger to halt his protest. “Unique jumbles, I'll grant you, like a handful of dice cast again and again, coming up with different combinations every time.”

He drew himself up, which made him loom over her, which in turn made her belly quiver in a most distracting way. His glower deepened. “I. Am. Nothing. Like. My. Parents.”

With that pronouncement, he turned and stalked away.

Of course, he didn't get very far. The laboratory was big, but not that big.

That had been rather too easy. Francesca's lips twitched. She mustn't laugh at him. Even in Italy, her family scolded her for her frivolity. It was just so hard to keep a straight face when people were so very absurd!

Then Mr. Worthington turned back to face her with his eyes narrowed. “The reason that I believe Lamarckism is unsound is proven in your own life. You do not fit in with Sir Geoffrey and Judith at all, although you are closely related. They are serious, thoughtful individuals. You, on the other hand, are flippant and scattered. One day you are cooking; the next you are measuring bunny ears.” He folded his arms and tilted his head slightly. “And I will wager that you are no more like your family in Italy!”

Francesca went very still. She felt cold all over, except for her face, which burned.

“Well, are you?”

She wasn't. Not even a little bit. Which was why she had journeyed so far . . . only to find herself a misfit yet again. “Not all of them.” She lifted her chin. “But I am very much like my father.”

Orion snorted. “So he is an injudicious, unfocused dabbler
with too many pots on the stove and not enough spoons to stir them with?”

Francesca's embrace tightened until Herbert began to squirm a little. Her face felt hot, her belly cold. She would not cry in front of horrible, arrogant Orion Worthington. “No. Like me, and my mother, he trained as a biologist at the University of Bologna. Like me, he saw beauty and mystery in science. Unlike me, he is dead. My mother as well. So do not bother trying to blame anyone living for the way that I am.”

Shocked out of his irritation, Orion finally realized he ought to shut his stupid trap.
Blast it!
Why had he let her goad him so?

Without another word, Francesca stomped out of the laboratory with the rabbit in her arms. Just outside the wide doors, the gardener had planted a flower bed around a stone bench. Orion watched as Francesca plunked her bottom down on the bench and let the rabbit slip into her lap.

She glanced back at the laboratory once, then bit her lip and turned away.

Orion couldn't see her face, but by the droop of her shoulders and even the tilt of her head, he knew she was upset.

And he could feel a chill in his gut that he finally identified as guilt.

He had committed the highest sin in science. He had jumped to conclusions. Disturbed by her appeal, upset by his own desire for her, he had made a serious mistake about Miss Francesca Penrose. She might dash about like a mad thing, with laughter perpetually lurking in her eyes, but it was clear that she took her research very seriously. She was, in fact, officially more highly educated than he was! He might have realized that sooner had he not been so distracted by the body wrapped around the mind.

Orion was not accustomed to being wrong. Even his outrageous family members listened when he spoke. They might be unpredictable and rather useless, but they believed in his
genius.

Orion tried to return to his work. Although he had misbehaved, this was a professional situation, not a drawing room farce. If Francesca wanted to waste valuable laboratory time on sulking, who was he to stop her? Unfortunately, he found it very difficult to concentrate, knowing that she sat out there in distress.

Finally, he put down the beaker of saline that he'd measured four times because he kept losing track of the drops falling from the pipette. He wasn't going to get anything useful done until he fixed what he had broken.

He left the laboratory to find Francesca sitting very still on the bench. Her specimen was lazily lolloping around the perimeter of the flower bed, nibbling at primroses and alyssum. He started to point out the rabbit's inevitable jailbreak, but Francesca held up one finger without looking at him.

He went silent, curious. Advancing until he could lean over her shoulder and see into her lap, he found himself distracted by the enchanting view of her décolletage. After allowing himself only a brief—well, somewhat brief—glance down her neckline, he focused his vision a little farther afield.

“Ah.” He saw that she had a sky blue butterfly resting on her sleeve near her wrist. He kept his voice low. Worthingtons knew the rules of good specimen collection. “
Polyommatus icarus
, or common blue. Very numerous in this part of England.”

She looked up then, gazing at him flatly over her shoulder. “What do numbers have to do with worth?” she murmured. She looked back down at the delicate insect. “If it were the only one of its kind, it would still be precisely as beautiful as it is now.”

It was a pretty thing, Orion mused. The iridescent blue of its wings shimmered in the pearly light of the cloudy day. It flexed its wings open and closed, slowly making its way across the fabric of her sleeve.

“Do you suppose it thinks the flowers on my dress are
real?” Her voice was soft, which oddly only emphasized its richness.