Page 40 of Who Wants to Marry a Duke
He was certainly doing a bad job of keeping an eye on her work. Not that he felt the need for that anymore. It galled him to admit it, but Grey had proved to be right about her and her abilities. That had become abundantly clear yesterday.
He still had to talk to her. Because once she did enough tests to confirm whether Grey’s father had died by poisoning, there was nothing to keep her here. Beatrice clearly didn’t need a companion, and Olivia had no desire to go into society, so the only person to whom Olivia would need to explain her early return home would be her stepmother. Undoubtedly, Olivia could figure out a way to make that sound believable.
But once she departed from here, she had no reason to see him again. Ever. And that disturbed him. They’d left too many issues unsettled between them. At the very least, he wanted to learn the truth about certain matters. He deserved that, didn’t he?
Fortunately, the upstairs drawing room overlooked the path to and from the old dairy. So he set up watch by the window after dinner, with a glass of brandy in one hand and a newspaper in the other. The lights were now on in the building, and he felt fairly certain she’d never leave lamps or candles to burn down in her laboratory.
Sure enough, close to ten o’clock he saw those lights go out one by one. Eventually Olivia, enveloped in a cloak, emerged and headed down the path.
Thank God.
After one last swig of brandy, Thorn headed to the stairs to waylay her.
Chapter Eight
Olivia let the sleepy footman take her cloak as she entered the house, with the journals and notebooks she wanted to review clutched in one hand. Then she climbed the stairs in a daze of anticipation. The first crucial element of her plan had gone well. Tomorrow she would tackle the one that mattered to Grey. She’d left everything prepared for it in her laboratory. How could she even sleep? She was far too excited.
The chemist in her wanted to press on tonight. But a lack of sleep could easily cause one to make a mistake, and she wanted nothing to stand in the way of her doing this properly. Besides, she suspected that the tests would take more than a few hours anyway. So it was better to read over her materials rather than to make a crucial error in her experiments.
Still musing about the tests—how best to perform and document them and which one she should tackle first—she didn’t even see Thorn at the head of the stairs until she was almost upon him.
She jumped. “Don’t startle me like that!” She scowled at him as she took the final steps. “Why are you up so late, anyway?”
“I wanted to talk to you. And since you refused to let me into your laboratory . . .” He finished with a shrug so typically him she couldn’t help but shake her head.
“Has everyone else retired?” she asked.
“Everyone but us.”
“Then I’m glad you’re up. I have to tellsomeonehow everything went, and I don’t think I can sleep until I do.”
“By all means, let me be your confidant,” he said. “Just remember that I don’t know a damned thing about chemistry, which I think I illustrated quite well yesterday.”
A laugh escaped her. “True, but then I don’t know anything about being a duke. So I suppose we’re even.”
“Here, let’s go into the blue drawing room,” he said. “No one’s awake to see, and I promise to behave.”
She wasn’t sure shewantedhim to behave. But telling him that was obviously unwise. He’d made it clear in London that he would never offer for her, and she refused to let him tarnish her reputation for the sake of a little fun.
Even if a little fun did sound delicious after her long day in the laboratory.
As he ushered her inside, fortunately leaving the door open, she said, “Oh, I didn’t even know this room was here! How beautiful it is.” Majestic delft tiles surrounded the fireplace, and everything else seemed designed to complement it, from the simple sofa of cobalt-blue brocade to the elegant writing table and the curtains of a blue-and-white toile fabric.
He lit candles to give them a bit more light. Then taking a seat on one end of the sofa, he gestured for her to sit at the other end.
But she was too excited to do so. After setting her journals and notebooks on the writing table next to a tray with two glasses and a crystal decanter of what looked like brandy, she began to pace before the fireplace.
He chuckled. “What’s got you so energetic at this late hour? Don’t tell me you’ve already found arsenic in what I brought you earlier.”
“No, not yet. The important thing is what Ididn’tfind arsenic in.”
A frown creased his brow. “I don’t understand.”
“You know that Grey’s father was embalmed, right? Well, I got lucky and was able to extract embalming fluid from the heart. And it contained no arsenic.”
“So he wasn’t poisoned.”
“I don’t know that yet.” She stopped in front of Thorn. “You see, some embalmers use a fluid that has arsenous acid as an ingredient. But the embalmer of Grey’s father didn’t, thank goodness.”
