Thank goodness Mum had loaned her the Trentingham diamonds, or she’d have felt like a pauper standing beside him.
“Shall we?” he asked.
From out of nowhere, it seemed, her mother appeared and kissed her on the cheek. “Have a lovely time, dear. You won’t be back too late?”
“I won’t, Mum.” Violet took Ford’s arm.
When he handed her into the carriage and then lowered himself beside her, her heart skittered.
They were alone. She was alone with the viscount.
He closed the door, and she immediately leapt for the opposite bench.
The carriage lurched forward as she settled in her new seat, busily arranging her skirts. “I…feel ill when I sit backwards.”
“Do you, indeed?” Though she couldn’t bring herself to look at him, his tone made it clear he wasn’t fooled.
He moved to sit beside her.
Violet’s whole body tensed. ”Thank you for inviting me,” she said to her lap.
“The pleasure is mine.” He dipped his head, forcing her to meet his gaze. Seeing her expression, he laughed. ”I won’t bite. I won’t even try to kiss you, I promise.”
He didn’t, and after a moment she relaxed. They rode for a spell in companionable silence, bouncing over uneven cobblestones and in and out of ruts.
Until a particularly large rut threw him sideways into her. He righted himself promptly, apologizing for squashing her, but somehow his arm had made its way around her shoulders.
“You smell good,” he murmured.
“So do you,” she replied shyly. He did, though. There was that hint of patchouli soap again, tonight overlaid by another scent—something unfamiliar and exotic. She wondered if her mother could identify it and make her a bottle, so she could inhale it and remember this evening.
As the carriage tottered through the streets, his fingers traced shivery lines up and down her arm and over the back of her neck. Her flesh prickled, and she felt warm all over.
In fact, her body seemed to be growing more and more heated.
“Oh my,” she whispered.
Oh, no, she thought.
“Do you want me to stop?” His breath tickled her ear. “Tell me if you want me to stop.”
She didn’t tell him to stop.
The carriage’s wheels bumped over the cobblestones, the springs squeaked through the traffic-clogged streets, and her breathlessness—short breathings, Aristotle’s Master-piece had called that—sounded louder than all of it.
She wanted him to kiss her. More than anything.
Insuperably.
But as she began to lean toward him, the carriage door was jerked open.
They had arrived.
THIRTY-THREE
VIOLET HAD always thought of scientific men as sober and staid, but there was an air of giddy excitement at Gresham College tonight.
Catching Ford’s gaze lingering on her bodice as they made their way through the narrow gatehouse off Bishopsgate Street, she folded her arms over her chest. She’d never appeared in public in such a daring gown, and it made her nervous, despite Ford’s equally showy attire. Perhaps a man could dress himself in the latest fashions and still be taken seriously, but would she be seen as frivolous and superficial?
“This was once the home of Sir Thomas Gresham,” Ford said as proudly as if the mansion belonged to him. “Founder of the college.”
Hand in hand—hers tingling—they crossed a simple courtyard toward the house, Violet’s knees feeling embarrassingly shaky. She tried her best to relax and concentrate on what he was telling her. After all, this was a place she’d always wanted to visit.
“When did the college open?” she asked.
“At the end of the last century, following Gresham’s death and that of his wife. He had no living heirs, you see, so he gifted his home to the people of London. He wished to make scholarship available free to every adult citizen.” Pushing open a heavy oak door, he guided her into a large chamber that looked medieval. “Here is the Reading Hall, where the lectures are given.”
“Oh, I wish I knew Latin so I could attend them.” Beneath a lofty scissor-beam ceiling painted in dazzling hues of red and gold, rows of wooden benches faced a lectern, behind which rose an exquisite oriel window. “What a heavenly place to learn.”
“I imagine when the Greshams lived here, this would have been their great hall.” Ford walked her through the soaring chamber, their footsteps echoing on the well-worn stone floor. “The college’s seven professors have lodgings here at Gresham and are each required to give one public lecture a week.”
Whom might she meet here tonight? Breathless with anticipation, she peeked into some adjoining rooms, a bit disappointed when she found them unoccupied. “It just looks like a big, old house.”
“It was, remember. But you will see in a moment that although his family lived here for years, and his widow afterwards, Gresham had a college in mind when he built it.”
Another small courtyard lay outside the Reading Hall, leading to an arched passage that opened into a massive, grassy square with colonnaded buildings on all four sides.
“See?” Ford said. “It’s essentially a college quadrangle.”
Flaming torches bathed the space in a warm glow. Musicians were tuning up in one corner. Talking animatedly in small groups, guests dressed in every color of the rainbow crowded the enclosure, their chatter filling the air.
She was here. Finally, she was here. A serving maid handed her a goblet of canary, and she sipped the sweet wine, turning in a slow circle, imagining how the area might look in the daytime. Peaceful and meditative. Shut off from the hubbub of London by the buildings all around.
“I can picture it quiet,” she said, “students leisurely crossing the grass, or
