“’Tis a beauty!” Mr. Taft exclaimed upon entering the study, going unerringly to the largest orrery in the room. Five or six feet across, it was easily higher than her waist. By far the biggest one Thea had encountered, all of her previous experience being with the miniature clock-top models and an occasional tabletop orrery.
“I’d seen the plans on her,” Mr. Taft continued, “but not the finished apparatus. She fulfilled her design and then some. What seems to be the problem with her, my lord?”
“Uranus,” Lord Tremayne said succinctly, following Mr. Taft over to the piece while she remained just inside the open door, ready for a quick escape should one prove necessary. “Refuses to or…bit.”
“Well then, it’s our duty to practitioners of astrolatry everywhere to get her running smoothly, is it not?” While Mr. Taft reached the device and started evaluating the individual planets and parts as he might a hotly desired horse at auction, she worked to puzzle out the meaning of the unfamiliar word. Astro was easy: celestial or heavenly bodies. Latry had her stumped, until with a mental snap she recalled idolatry and quickly deduced Mr. Taft referenced enthusiastic sky-watchers, worshipers of heavenly objects.
After investigating the orrey’s perimeter, he bent to peer into the central shaft where all the planetary orbits originated. “Have you trouble with any others? Or do they all run like clockwork, heh?”
Lord Tremayne smiled at his jest. “Just Uranus. B-b—” He coughed into his hand. “Finished in seventy-eight, you see.”
“Ah. That explains it.”
Explains what? Thea wanted to venture but was hesitant to speak, hesitant to draw attention to herself. No matter what his eyes and actions conveyed, breaching the home of one’s protector was ill-advised—if not an outright hanging offense. The Mistress Code of Expected Behavior Susan and Lady Wylde planned to pen was surely catching fire at Thea’s brazenness.
Seeing a yawning dog emerge from beneath a huge mahogany desk, she relinquished her post to make her way to one of the large chairs near it. She perched on the edge but the leather was so very comfortable, she found herself sinking right in. She held out her hand and was rewarded when the big canine sniffingly advanced.
“You must be Cyclops, hmmm, boy?” she whispered to the ugliest dog she’d ever seen, one eye vacant, muzzle scarred and askew, drool drizzling from one side of his jaw. Nevertheless, there was something endearing in the way he nuzzled her thigh and pushed his head under her hand, not content until she was scratching everywhere she could reach.
When she approached the underside of his chin, she swore the dog purred. She giggled to herself. He angled his head and gave a happy, slobbering bark, and Thea couldn’t help but cringe when she noticed they’d unintentionally captured the men’s attention.
So she braved speaking up. “What does seventy-eight explain?”
“Uranus was discovered in 1781, a handful of years after this beauty was built,” Mr. Taft told her, arms wide as though he’d hug the huge, broken contraption if he could. “Thought it was a comet at first, but the scientists of the day soon put that to rights. I can just imagine after all the effort put into this darling how its creator would be vexed beyond reckoning to miss out on the greatest astronomical discovery in his lifetime.”
When she nodded with interest, he continued, his enthusiasm for his topic growing. “The planets through Saturn were discovered back in ancient times, you see. For centuries, nothing so exciting has been identified so conclusively. And now she has us to set her to rights!” Taft fairly glowed at the challenge.
“Aye,” Lord Tremayne confirmed, touching a gentle fingertip to the bright blue ball representing Uranus.
A faraway look came into his eyes as he skimmed his fingers over the longest arm. The light touch was at odds with the hardness she glimpsed in his flexing jaw, the growing tension she sensed emanating from him. Perhaps he realized the absurdity of having his mistress occupy his study, and with a witness he so obviously respected?
She shifted, tempted to flee all over again. But just then Cyclops closed his eye and sighed, nestling his head heavily upon her lap.
“Was added then,” Daniel forced out. “Worked.” His bloody neck was starting to seize up on him. He wanted to howl, or at least curse his blighted mouth. Instead he ungritted his teeth and tried to explain. “Then stored. A-b-bu-bandoned.”
Son of a bitch!
“Difficulty getting the words out, my lord? Just take your time.” Smiling serenely, the man gave Thea an understanding look during this little speech—the speech that threatened to destroy Daniel’s composure if not his life. “I’m in no hurry, not when in the company of such a magnificent specimen and people who appreciate her.”
While Daniel felt his world tilt on its axis, sensed more than saw the rigidity that came into Thea’s posture, the way she quickly turned from stroking Cy to studying them, Taft blithely carried on. “My uncle was the same way. Got tripped up by stubborn letters now and then…”
Goddammit, why now? Just when he’d started to believe he could tell her, could admit his weakness and it might not condemn him back to silence, might not mean the immediate end of what they shared.
But he’d thought to tell her his way, in his own time. Perhaps next month, after getting her bosky on fine brandy or sauced on wine. Or next year, after getting her with child—
Good God? Where had that come from? On the heels of his earlier thoughts too. Damn him. Twice in one night he thought to impregnate her?
A child wasn’t a pawn. Wasn’t, in truth, anything he’d ever thought about before, not in relation to his fathering one. But he imagined it now? When the sun had
