“Mostly just when I tried to expose my older brother’s misdeeds. The exalted heir who could do no wrong. Or so my father was convinced. My attempts to prove otherwise were hopeless.”
“What did your brother do?” Rose asked. “Was he naughty like Rowan?”
“Rowan?” Rand’s expression was one of total disbelief. “Rowan is a saint compared to Alban. The man is downright cruel—or at least he was as a boy. As I haven’t been home in eight years, I don’t know what he’s like now. But though I know people can change, I don’t expect Alban has. He’s always hated me. He hates a lot of people. There’s something evil about my brother.”
Eight years. Lily couldn’t fathom avoiding her family for eight years. She saw a loneliness in Rand, a loneliness in his eyes. A loneliness she yearned to help him heal.
“Evil,” she mused. “Could it possibly have been your imagination? Jealousy on your part? After all, he’s the heir, and you were young. Perhaps if you go back—”
“I have no desire to go back. I’m happy with my life as it is. And if you had read Alban’s diaries—”
“You read his private diaries? No wonder he hated you!” Despite his distress, Lily was tempted to laugh. If she’d read her sisters’ diaries, or Rowan’s, they’d be out for her blood, no mercy. Not that any of them kept diaries, but that was beside the point.
To Rand’s credit, he turned a dusky shade of red. “It was only because I was hoping to expose him—”
Rose made a rude noise. “Hoping to get him in trouble, you mean.”
“Well, he deserved it. And I didn’t precisely read them,” he said, a bit defensively. “I transcribed them.”
Beatrix leapt onto Lily’s lap. “What do you mean?”
“I decoded them. He wrote them in secret languages that he devised. Because they were so incriminating.”
“And you broke the codes?”
“Constantly. It infuriated him, of course. And I never managed to prove his guilt to my father’s satisfaction—he only punished me for invading Alban’s privacy. But it did reveal this skill I have for puzzling out languages. I’m sure the old man was as relieved as I was when he gained me early entrance to Oxford based on that talent.”
Lily stroked the cat thoughtfully. “And you’ve stayed there ever since.”
“It became my home. I eventually became a fellow and then a professor. I know my father looks upon my profession with disdain. A Nesbitt, working for a living. But I like my life. The university is orderly.”
He looked out the window again, his eyes turning hazy.
“At Oxford, the world makes sense.”
TWELVE
NO SOONER HAD the carriage door opened than Ford whisked Rand upstairs to the attic. “How was your stay at Trentingham?”
“Fine.” Rand looked around at the chaotic jumble of scientific instruments that littered Ford’s laboratory. “Is there nothing I can do downstairs, where the damage—”
“It’s all being handled. I’m in the middle of something here—I’ll be with you in a minute.” Ford added a noxious-smelling substance to some cloudy fluid in a beaker. “Fine, was it?”
“Actually,” Rand admitted, “it was damned awkward. Will the guest room be ready for me to sleep here tonight?”
Ford stirred the mess with some sort of stick made of glass. “If you can live with a bare, damp floor.”
“Bare and damp won’t deter me.”
“Very well, then.” Ford nodded. “I’ll let this sit until tomorrow. Let me go get the book.”
Rand plopped onto a chair and rubbed his face. In two short days, his placid life seemed to have become overly complicated. He felt absurdly relieved to be moving back here this afternoon. Trentingham Manor was a lovely home, but at Lakefield he ran less risk of finding himself alone with a certain lovely daughter.
He felt much safer here. More in control. Less likely to have stupid things come out of his mouth.
I’ve thought about you for four years…
“Here it is,” Ford said, setting the book on the table and taking a seat beside him.
“It” was Secrets of the Emerald Tablet, a small, brown leather volume that appeared to be of little consequence. Ancient and handwritten in a cryptic code, it looked like a simple diary. But it was much more than that. It was purported to hold the key to the Philosopher’s Stone—the secret of how to make gold.
Ford had found the book years earlier and brought it to Rand to translate. When the task had proved a difficult one, they’d set it aside for a time. Now Rand looked forward to the challenge.
It would take his mind off another challenge that had much more personal repercussions.
“Awkward,” Ford echoed thoughtfully, moving closer with a scrape of his chair. His laboratory was a homely space, huge but hardly luxurious, cluttered as it was with every toy a scientist and alchemist could desire. “My mother-in-law is generally good at setting her guests at ease.”
“And her daughter is good at unsettling them.”
“Rose?” Ford chuckled. “Although she can be rather forward, I assure you she’s an innocent at heart.”
“Rather forward hardly begins to define Rose. But I meant Lily.”
“Lily? Lily soothes those around her. Creatures as well as people. What could sweet Lily possibly do to discompose you?”
Rand met his old school friend’s eyes. “She can look at me. That’s all it takes.”
“Holy Hades,” Ford said, borrowing his father-in-law’s favorite phrase. “You’re falling for her.”
“I didn’t say that,” Rand protested. It was a long way from lusting after a woman to falling for her, wasn’t it?
His friend’s laughter was more irritating than supportive. With a huff, Rand opened the book.
His feelings on the matter seemed to get more complicated by the minute. These cryptic writings would be a hell of a lot easier to figure out.
THIRTEEN
DOWNSTAIRS, LILY and Rose had joined their oldest sister in her cheerful, turquoise-toned drawing room. With the three of them together, it felt just like old times.
Almost. Violet, of course, was married
