Yet...she held William John’s gaze, recognizing his sincerity, then she looked at Rand. “We all need the Throgmorton steam engine working perfectly as soon as may be. If you require my help, I’m sure I can manage an hour or so to assist in whatever way I can in that endeavor.”
His expression satisfied, Rand inclined his head.
Flora looked bemused.
William John beamed and slapped his palms to the table. “Well, then. That’s settled.” He pushed to his feet and looked at Rand. “We’d better get on.”
* * *
Clive Mayhew returned to London that evening. Burdened with his easel, folding stool, and satchel as well as his bag, he alighted from the train at Paddington Station and managed to find a hackney to ferry him to his lodgings in Mortimer Street.
Juggling his bags and equipment, he unlocked the front door, then struggled up the narrow stairs to his rooms on the first floor.
With a sigh and a wince, he set down the easel and stool in a corner of the shabbily furnished living room, then laid the satchel on the small table beside the single armchair angled before the hearth. He paused to light the sconce on the wall, then carried his bag through a secondary door into the bedroom beyond.
After depositing his bag on the bare floor by the narrow bed, he returned to the living room. The rooms had been closed up; the atmosphere was musty and close. He crossed to the single window, unlocked the sash, and pushed it up. A bare breath of breeze wafted in.
A scarred tantalus stood against the wall below the window. Mayhew checked the bottles, found one with several inches of brandy remaining, and poured one of those inches into a glass.
Finally, glass in hand, he sank into the armchair. After downing a gulp of the poor-quality brandy and grimacing at the taste, he reached for his satchel, flipped open the flap, and drew out the sketches he’d made over the previous days.
They weren’t bad. Not bad at all. Cruickshank at the News would pay well for them.
Unfortunately, not well enough.
The last sketches in the pile were the pair from Throgmorton Hall. He’d risen early that morning to finish them, sitting at the small desk beneath the window in his room at the Norreys Arms.
He’d propped the window open and the faint rustle of the trees in the woods had, at first, been the only sound, that and the faint trickling of the nearby stream. He’d inked in the sketches, soothed by the country peace flowing all around him.
The views of the Hall were exquisite—even if it was he who said so. As both were from the same viewpoint, they were similar, yet the changing of the aft
ernoon light had resulted in subtle differences.
His thoughts shifted back to the household at the Hall—to Miss Throgmorton and Mrs. Makepeace.
They’d welcomed him warmly and had been genuinely interested in and impressed by his sketching.
They’d been...nice. Honest, straightforward, comfortable people who assumed those they met were equally honest and straightforward.
What would they think of him if they ever learned his true purpose in wrangling an invitation to the Hall?
For long moments, he toyed with the notion of stepping back from his uncle’s scheme. It was crazy and risky—what did he know of inventions and engines? He’d agreed because it had seemed so distant and in an arena he cared nothing about.
But meeting Miss Throgmorton and Mrs. Makepeace had brought living people into the picture. Nice people.
Clive raised his glass and, his gaze unseeing, took a long sip.
He could honestly say that until agreeing to act for his uncle, he’d never knowingly and deliberately done another harm—at least, not as an adult. He knew right from wrong and had never intentionally crossed that line.
Of course, he still hadn’t managed to blot his copybook, but he had tried.
Uncertainty—fueled by welling discomfort over his covert role—rose beneath his skin, an increasingly persistent itch. He shifted in the chair and refocused on his sketches—those on his lap and the two he still held in one hand.
Surely—surely—he could find some other way to assemble the necessary to get Quire off his back?
He stared at the sketches of Throgmorton Hall, and the conviction that he couldn’t do as his uncle wanted grew. His wits skittered this way and that, like a mouse desperately seeking a way out of a maze.
The sound of the street door opening jerked him from his thoughts. As heavy footsteps climbed the stairs, on a spurt of panic, he remembered he hadn’t relocked the front door.