As Rand watched, Mayhew made some comment, then collected his sketches. Felicia rose and went indoors; a moment later, she returned and resumed her seat. Presumably, Mayhew was leaving, and Felicia had gone to ask for his horse to be brought around.
Rand shifted, uncertain and faintly irritated. He tried to get a better sense of—a clearer insight into—the instincts that were so firmly insisting that Mayhew was a threat. Which instincts? And a threat to what?
Given his focus on the invention, he’d assumed the prickling tension had to do with that, warning him he should see Mayhew as a threat to the Throgmorton engine.
But what if it wasn’t that? What if his instincts were bristling because they saw Mayhew as a threat in another sense?
As a threat to Rand because of his fascination with Felicia Throgmorton.
Cloaked in the trees’ shadows, he wrestled with the realization that—almost without him being aware of it—that second option had become a possibility.
Just because he’d decided he wouldn’t think of finding a wife until after he’d established his position in the investing world didn’t mean Fate would fall in with his plans.
Concealed in the wood’s gloom, he watched as Mayhew rose, and Felicia got to her feet. With smiles and bows, Mayhew took his leave of the ladies, then walked back along the terrace and around the corner of the house to where his horse would be waiting in the forecourt.
Rand studied Felicia as she remained by the table, watching Mayhew depart; he couldn’t see her face.
Ran
d’s lips twisted, then he shook his head, made his way out of the trees, and strode for the workshop doors.
He could pretend all he liked, but the truth was that, regardless of whether Mayhew had any interest in the Throgmorton steam engine, Rand and his prickling instincts would still see the artist as a threat.
A different type of threat, yet a threat nonetheless.
As for which type of threat Mayhew actually represented...at that point, Rand didn’t know. He couldn’t even make an educated guess.
CHAPTER 5
As dusk turned to darkness outside the windows and the clocks throughout the house chimed for ten o’clock, Rand sat at the desk in his bedchamber and penned a letter to his half brother, Ryder, and Ryder’s wife, Mary.
The couple had known Rand had been on his way to visit them; not appearing and not sending word wasn’t an option.
Even if Ryder wasn’t inclined to worry unduly, Mary would fret, and then Ryder would act—most likely by asking questions in London—which wouldn’t be helpful. Aside from avoiding such an outcome, Rand wanted to make his excuses to his nephews and niece and assure the whole family that he would join them at Raventhorne Abbey as soon as the problems with the Throgmorton Steam-Powered Horseless Carriage were resolved.
As his nib softly scratched across the paper, Rand felt increasingly sure that he wouldn’t be free to visit the Abbey until after the twenty-second of the month—after the exhibition at which the invention was to be unveiled. Until then...he expected to be living on tenterhooks.
They had to meet that deadline and meet it successfully. Any alternative would harm him, his investors, the Throgmortons, and their household—it was as simple as that.
Not that he communicated any of his anxieties to Ryder and Mary. Forging his own path meant doing things himself, and while Ryder, as the Marquess of Raventhorne, possessed significant power, and Mary, as a Cynster, had her own brand of power, too, in the arena Rand had chosen as his own, that sort of power was, if not entirely impotent, then as near as made no odds.
Increasingly, these days, men like Rand were being judged by their achievements. One’s birth helped, but the achievements mattered more.
He reached the end of his missive, signed his name, then blotted the page. He folded the sheet, inscribed Ryder’s direction, and used the stick of wax supplied to seal the flap, pressing his signet ring to a melted blob, then waving the letter to cool the seal. That done, letter in hand, he turned down the lamp, rose—and froze, staring out of the window into the country dark.
Had he just glimpsed a figure drifting through the near-black shadows edging the lawn?
He stared, but could no longer see anything to suggest someone was out there. The figure—if figure there had been—had been moving southward. If there was someone there, they would now be out of his sight.
Rand frowned. Slowly tapping the letter against his fingertips, he stood looking through the window while he reviewed the reasons his mind might be playing tricks on him by imagining a figure flitting through the woods.
Despite his and, indeed, Felicia’s initial suspicions of Mayhew, they all—meaning Felicia, Flora, Johnson, Shields, and, reluctantly, Rand—had agreed that the man had shown no sign whatever of being anything other than what he purported to be—an artist keen on sketching the Hall.
They’d discussed the matter over the dinner table, then called in Johnson and Shields for their views of Mayhew. Johnson had served the Throgmortons for decades and was well aware of the threat to the family a seemingly innocent man might pose, and Shields, as a Londoner, had been born suspicious, yet neither man saw Mayhew as harboring any sinister intent.
Grudgingly, Rand had accepted that his heightened instincts were, in this case, heightened for another reason entirely—one that had nothing to do with any threat to the Throgmorton engine.
In accepting that...