Page 38 of Affair

“I disagree. You do not owe her anything of the sort. But I realize that I cannot dissuade you from your goal.”

“No, you cannot stop me.”

“As I have explained, I am committed to the same goal because of the promise that I made to my aunt.” Baxter met her eyes. “It seems we must cooperate to achieve our mutual ends.”

Charlotte shook her head slowly in a gesture of mingled resignation and disbelief. “Everything I sensed about you at our first meeting has proven to be true, Mr. St. Ives.”

He frowned. “What do you mean?”

“You are, indeed, a very dangerous man.”

Engaged? To Charlotte Arkendale?” Rosalind crashed her dainty teacup down into its saucer. “I do not believe it. You cannot have gone and engaged yourself to such a creature. You must be mad.”

“It’s a possibility that I have considered closely,” Baxter admitted.

“Are you joking with me?” Rosalind gave him a reproving frown. “You know very well that I have never entirely comprehended your decidedly odd sense of humor. Tell me precisely what is going on here.”

“I thought I had explained. It’s the logical course of action, assuming you wish me to pursue my inquiries.”

He walked across the drawing room to examine the new chimneypiece that had just been installed above the fireplace. The elaborately carved design was in the new Zamarian style, as was virtually everything else in the chamber. Rosalind had recently redecorated. The Egyptian-style drawing room with its hieroglyph-covered wallpaper, palm trees, strange statues, and artificial columns had been converted into a Zamarian courtyard scene.

It was the latest in a long line of such alterations for the large town house. Growing up here with his mother and his aunt, Baxter had played in an Etruscan cottage, studied in a Chinese garden, practiced fencing in a Greek temple, and, mercifully, moved out of a Roman sepulchral monument.

From the day he had taken his own lodgings Baxter had established one cardinal rule for his household. No changes in the interior design were made solely for the purpose of accommodating a new fashion.

It occurred to him as he surveyed the gilded chimneypiece that he had always resisted change and the turmoil it brought.

As a child, the major upheavals in his life had always seemed to follow on the heels of some strong, emotional outburst between his parents. The pair had been experts in the fine art of conducting flamboyant lovers’ quarrels and passionate reunions. Indeed, they had thrived on such scenes and had shone particularly well in front of an audience. They had not cared if that audience sometimes consisted of only one small boy.

Baxter had dreaded the inevitable battles, waited anxiously for the reunions, and in between endured the cruelty of his peers.

From his earliest years, he had set out to suppress any trace of his parents’ tumultuous natures that he might have inherited. He had fashioned a life for himself that was designed to be hermetically sealed against strong emotion in the same way that he sealed a bell jar against contaminating vapors.

He told himself that the only excitement that intrigued him was that which took place in his laboratory. But now Charlotte had entered his self-contained, well-ordered world and he feared that he would not be able to resist conducting a few risky experiments.

If he was not very careful things would explode in his face.

“Are you completely convinced that this Miss Arkendale is truly innocent?” Rosalind asked.

“Yes.” Baxter turned away from the fireplace frieze. “I no longer have any doubts at all on that point. When you meet her, you will understand.”

“If you’re quite certain,” Rosalind said hesitantly.

“There is little choice in the matter. She is as determined to track down Drusilla Heskett’s murderer as you are. I cannot talk her out of the business so I am obliged to work with her.”

“You intend to use this fictitious engagement as an excuse for the two of you to go about together.”

“It is the only way.”

Rosalind looked unconvinced. She rested one arm on the elegantly curved arm of the Zamarian green sofa and examined Baxter closely. “I do not know what to say.”

“As it happens, I don’t want you to say anything at all. Not even to your closest friends. No one must know that this engagement is a fraud, do you understand? Absolutely no one.”

“This is to be a conspiracy? Really, Baxter, you can hardly expect me to go along with such an outlandish scheme.”

“On the contrary, I know you very well, Rosalind. I suspect you will enjoy the whole thing very much. It’s just the sort of play-acting that should appeal to your taste for the melodramatic.”

Rosalind managed to look affronted. “What a thing to say to your own aunt.”

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