Season For Desire (6 page)

The knife and fork resumed their motion. “That was never in question, I hope. But I also hope you will not blame me for that, any more than you might blame me for having dark hair or looking a certain way.”

Estella snorted. “Oh, I don’t think anyone’s likely to blame you for the way you look, young lady.” Audrina took after her paternal grandmother, if Estella recalled that lady aright, which meant the fortunate girl had escaped both her mother’s weak chin and her father’s harsh brow.

“Rather cold in here, isn’t it?” Lord Dudley spoke into the midst of another conversation, cupping at his ear. “Fireplaces don’t seem to be drawing correctly. Only let me know if you get chilled”—he winked—“and we can add a splash of something to the afternoon tea.”

The conversation took few unexpected twists after that, as Richard Rutherford raced through his meal and cast approximately ten thousand sidelong glances at Sophy. Wondering about the puzzle box, maybe, though Estella felt all the difference between Sophy’s fresh forty years and her own fifty-eight. Giles seemed preoccupied as well, too much so to let off another of the verbal cannon-shots with which he’d entertained her in the carriage. It was left to Audrina and Sophy and the Dudleys to chat, mostly about the home. And since no one bothered to call it
a great drafty pile in the middle of godforsaken moorland
, their observations were hardly worth listening to.

“May I offer you some cheese, Lady Irving?”

She blinked at being addressed, and realized Richard Rutherford was the one who had done so. He stood behind her chair, near the sideboard, and held a small knife with which others had carved sectors of Cheddar from a fat wedge.

Estella’s stomach gave a gurgle of acceptance. She had taken little food—her corsets were getting more and more difficult to lace—yet her appetite stubbornly refused to vanish. “I don’t eat cheese, Rutherford. Cheese is vulgar.” Her voice sounded more snappish than she intended, and not the good sort of snappish like a warm ginger biscuit.

Rutherford only lifted his dark brows, as though her observation was perfectly pleasant. “Do you think so? If you’re hungry, you might try it all the same. Vulgarity can be delicious.”

Her stomach gave a silent, surprised flip. “Are you flirting with me, Rutherford? At our ages?”
Because your age must be nearly mine; certainly you’ve long since passed forty years.

His head tilted slightly. A handsome head, with steely-dark hair and a pleasantly weather-worn look. “I’m . . . offering you cheese.”

Not an answer, but the tilt of his head provided all the finality his words had lacked.
What a ridiculous notion
.

“See to it that you don’t,” she replied. “Flirt. Or offer cheese. Either one.”

Aquamarine, she reminded herself. She was wearing aquamarine.

And as a small silver lining, she had finally lost her appetite.

“I might be able to open it,” Giles granted.

Even before Sophy Parr heard of their interest in the puzzle box, Giles could tell she—like Richard—had a favorite obsession. The permanent mark of the pince-nez; the dedication to her astronomy notes. As the group finished their cold lunch, she pushed back her chair and said she must be returning to her work. But when Richard mentioned the item at which they wanted a look was a puzzle box—with a significant glance at Giles, who dutifully spoke his line about being able to open it—off Sophy darted to her chamber to retrieve the box in question.

The party of travelers met the inhabitants of Castle Parr in the drawing room. As it was early afternoon, pale sunlight grappled with the fog and won passage through the room’s tall windows. The plaster ceiling was determined to remind them they were in a castle: flowered and trinketed and jeweled and painted in fanciful ways. The dark damask paper on the walls was the same sort favored in fine Philadelphia houses, though, and the furniture looked comfortable scattered around a great marble fireplace. The deep chairs and the heavy carpet bore scratches in their rich fabrics, as from canine claws and jaws.

Giles dragged a little tea table close to a window for the best light. Sophy sneezed several times as soon as she entered the room, cradling a cloth-covered object tightly.

“You had the dogs in here today, Mama,” she said. “I suppose you fed them tea and biscuits?”

“Of course I did not. What sort of fool would give a dog tea?” Lady Dudley craned her neck. “Let’s see the thing, Sophy.”

Sophy laid the object on the table at the center of their group, tugging away the handkerchiefs in which she’d wrapped it. “I beg your pardon,” she said, clutching them to her face as another fit of sneezes overtook her.

“Is that the famous puzzle box?” Lady Irving peered over it, her garish turban blocking all sight of the box. “All this fuss over a tiny little thing. What could it possibly hold, Rutherford?”

“I have no idea,” said Richard. “That’s the adventure.” Giles mouthed these words along with his father. Audrina’s mouth curled, a smile that felt like a secret shared between them.

To one who had never seen a puzzle box, the reality might be disappointing. Rather than a chest large enough to hold pirate treasure, it was small enough to rest within Giles’s broad hands when he lifted it from the table.

Though the size was not unusual, the detail work was beyond any Giles had ever seen. The box was golden, with elaborate patterns incised into its surface: diamonds, pinwheels, crosses within crosses. Within each pattern, another and another, all beautifully tessellated and laid out in diagonal stripes. The eye never grew tired of looking at such riotous order, but only hungered for more, more, seeking out further and deeper art in the tiny lines carved so long ago.

For a moment, Giles cradled it, letting the anticipation of the moment suffuse him. What if this was a treasure, after all? What if his mother’s final words had been literal rather than the laudanum dreams of a dying woman?

No, it was far too small a box to hold such possibility.

For one thing, it wasn’t made of gold. It was much too light for that. Giles had had a fair amount of metallurgy drummed into his head, since Richard was sure he’d want to become a jeweler one day. Was there ever a father who didn’t inflict his own thwarted dreams on his son?

Giles set the box down again on the tabletop, and the others leaned in to look, as though it might have changed during its minute in his hands. “Gilded wood of some kind,” he said. “I haven’t seen many
himitsu-bako
, but all the ones I’ve looked at closely have been made of wood.”

A memory teased Giles, and he bent over the box and inhaled deeply.

“Does it have a scent?” Sophy asked. “I never noticed one—but then, I spend most of my time sneezing.”

“No, it doesn’t. I expected it to. When I made a puzzle box for my mother years ago, she said she wanted it of rosewood because she liked the smell. But this one is—well, I don’t know what it is.”

“It’s golden. Does anything else matter?” said Lady Irving.

“Getting it open does.”

Before he could begin in earnest, each person had to take a turn hefting the box and testing its sealed lid. Even the person who had owned it for thirty-five years and could have been presumed to have given all this a try at her leisure.

“Sophy, how did you come to be friends with Lady Beatrix?” Audrina traced the whorls and incisions on the box lid. “You must be quite a bit younger than she was.”

“I should say so,” muttered Lady Irving. “Not close in age to Rutherford at all.”

Sophy shot the countess an odd look, which was something Giles wanted to do about ninety percent of the time. “My elder sister was of an age with Lady Beatrix. Since I idolized my sister, I idolized her friends, too. I was a curious child, as you can imagine, and my sister was kind enough to tolerate my presence when her friends called.” She pressed the bridge of her nose. “Some of them, that is. Some of her friends wouldn’t allow a child to stay in the drawing room when they called, but Lady Beatrix always did. She said I reminded her of her own sister.”

“That makes perfect sense.” Richard, cheerful.

“That makes no sense at all. Are you talking about Lady Fontaine?” Giles had met his mother’s younger sister during their first month in England, and a more shriveled, crabbed woman than Lady Fontaine was difficult to imagine. Arthritis had wrecked both sisters at an early age. If anything, it seemed to have wasted Lady Fontaine even more quickly than it had her older sister. Though it had spared her life for the time being, she was confined to a wheeled chair and had to be carried up the steps of her own home.

“She was young and healthy then.” Sophy’s voice held the wounded haughtiness of an expert whose opinion was questioned. “Perhaps your mother didn’t always communicate with her own family so well as she did others. Considering she had no contact with her relatives from the time of her leaving England—”

“Let’s have a look at that puzzle box,” Giles cut in. “Maybe I can get it open. Even after this immense stretch of time during which Lady Beatrix’s American and English families became utter strangers to one another.”

He flexed his hands, trying to dismiss the thread of pain that raced from wrist to elbow. No one knew when or how the arthritis would progress, if at all.

Wordlessly, Sophy handed the box to him.

“Sorry,” he muttered. “Thank you, Sophy, for keeping it safe for so long.”

Her gaze fled as though she were embarrassed. “Think nothing of it. I was happy to be remembered by her.”

Giles began to test the surface of the ancient gilded wood: a tug at an edge here, a tap at a corner there. Holding it up to one eye, he squinted over the surface to find the fine lines at which the patterned pieces were joined. The diagonal patterns led the eye astray; within the box, intricate straight edges and corners held its secrets.

“There’s nothing in the box.” Lady Dudley folded her arms.

“It could have papers inside,” said Richard.

The viscount laid a quelling hand on his wife’s forearm, which she shook off. “What papers? If they were important, Lady Beatrix would have kept them with her.”

“She couldn’t bring anything of value with her,” Richard replied. “Her belongings were sifted and searched. The marquess and marchioness were hardly pleased that their daughter wanted to marry an apprentice jeweler from America—though I had good prospects. Beatrix and I had to make for the Scottish border, then the Atlantic.”

Giles had heard this story at least ten thousand times before, to put a conservative figure to it. But with a new group of listeners, the hoary old tale seemed alive in a new way. He couldn’t help but think of Audrina, dragged almost to the Scottish border against her will. But what an adventure—dear God, now
he
was using that word—if instead one eloped in the course of a love affair.

He caught Audrina’s eye; she was looking a bit serious and pale. Setting the puzzle box down again, Giles stretched his arm across the small table and chucked her under the chin. “And your father thought your elder sisters married poorly, princess. Just imagine if an American tradesman turned up and threatened to take them halfway around the world.”

She batted his hand away. “He would probably prefer that to our staying in England besmirching his good name.”

“Would he really say ‘besmirch’? Do people here talk like that?”

Audrina raised a brow. “Lady Irving, if you could accidentally step on Mr. Rutherford’s foot?” Giles supposed he deserved the countess’s hearty stomp on his boot, though she could have done it with a little less enthusiasm.

“All right, your foot’s been flattened, young Rutherford,” grumped Lady Irving. “Now get the damned thing open. We’ve all waited long enough. If I want to hear a tragic family story about illness and whatnot, I’ll visit our fine feathered wastrel of a king and ask him about his mad father.”

Giles stared at her just long enough for her to understand he wasn’t obeying, then began testing the panels of the box again.

“There’s nothing tragic about what I said,” Richard protested. “These puzzle boxes are a nice tradition.”

“It’s plenty tragic,” retorted Lady Irving. “When you speak of Lady Beatrix still as your wife, though she’s been gone for three years.”

“She’s the only wife I’ve had. Why should I not call her that?”

“Someday, Rutherford,” said Lady Irving, “I am going to get you to lose your temper.”

“Why?”

Lady Irving made no reply, but the expression of her shoulders was eloquent.

Under the pressure of Giles’s fingers, the ancient wood of the puzzle box gave a creak. He fumbled with the tiny panels, feeling large and clumsy. “I’ve got one side, I think—oh, no, I haven’t.”

Audrina crouched to peer at the box from tabletop level. Looking straight down at her, Giles could see the pale parting in her pinned-up hair. A fine line of naked skin, soap-scented and clean from a bath the night before.

So he assumed. Not that he knew for certain. But it only made sense, cold and gritty as she’d been after her long days of travel, that she would want to sink her proud weariness into a great copper tub, and . . .

“Is there a problem?” Still crouching, Audrina looked up at him. Was that a knowing smile on her face? He had no idea what the expression on his own looked like, or whether it was possible for her to read
I was starting to imagine you undressing for a bath
across his features.

“Somewhere in the world, there certainly is. But if you’re talking about the puzzle box, it’s working exactly as it ought to.” He laid his hands flat on the table; the right angle of palm to forearm made the tendons in his wrist scream, then sigh their relief. “The puzzle box I built required only six moves to open it. Even so, you could play with it quite a while and never hit on the right combination of which side to pull first, or which panel ought to slide in which direction. And this one is far more complicated.”

“Then just break it,” said Lady Irving. “We don’t want to stand around this tea table for the rest of our lives. The box looks fragile. Here, just drop it on the floor.”

“No!” Giles shot a hand out to prevent her from touching the box—as did Richard, Sophy, and the now-standing Audrina.

“Besides”—Giles drew the box back toward himself with careful hands—“sometimes a vial of acid was enclosed in a puzzle box with documents. If the box was jarred too heavily, the vial would break and destroy the contents.”

Lady Irving shook her head, setting the sunset-bright plumes on her turban to wagging. “You really think that your mother gave Sophy a box of secret documents and acid when she was a child.
Really
. What would be the earthly point of that? ‘Dear Sophy-girl, someday my son who doesn’t exist yet will come along, and I want his hands to pain him. Please guard this box carefully for more than three decades, then present this acid to him with my compliments so he can shake it all over himself.’”

Giles blinked. “It’s not going to be anything like that. If there’s anything in there at all.”

“All right,” Lady Irving said into the silence. “So she wouldn’t have been so formal.”

“She left this behind before I existed,” Giles bit off. “So the contents, if any, are not for me. Just—just give me a few more minutes to get it open.”

“Hours,” corrected Audrina.

“Fine. Hours. Maybe.”

“Days? Weeks?”

Possibly, yes. For that matter,
never
was entirely possible. “Of course not that long,” Giles lied.

“While you are working,” said Lord Dudley in his hoarse voice, “shall we do a bit of festive decorating? The footmen have cut garland and holly. Rutherford, maybe you can climb about on the furniture to hang it. Lady D and I aren’t so young anymore.”

Richard appeared delighted. “I’d be glad to help, my lord. Where is the garland? That would be pleasant swagged across the chimneypiece.” Already a few strides away from the tea table, he tossed back, “Son, if you get that box open, give a shout right away.”

“
If
he
ever
gets it open.” In a sweep of scarlet and ocean blue, Lady Irving joined the others across the room.

Sophy sneezed. “You will get it open eventually, Mr. Rutherford. Though you might wish to keep a log of the attempts you have made.”

A good point. “You are right,” Giles muttered. “To track and record the movements I’ve tried. Best to be systematic.”

Another sneeze. “I’d best return to the library before my head falls off,” Sophy said in a stuffy voice. “If you find yourself on the verge of a miniature architectural triumph, do let me know.”