His feet took him eastward, toward the darkness of the woods. Before he reached the trees, he turned north, slowly pacing the stretch of sward that sloped gently upward from the south lawn, skirted the rear wall of the kitchen garden, then leveled off not far from the roses.
As he walked, he glanced to the side, into the wood. The trees grew thickly in that area, directly behind the house, and the undergrowth clogged the spaces between. Although it seemed the closest concealed approach to the workshop doors, the area was near impassable; the man he’d seen fleeing after the attempted break-in had raced away to the northeast and plunged into the woods that presently lay ahead on Rand’s right.
He’d gone searching on the morning after the scare. He’d found the path the man must have taken, but with the ground summer hard, there’d been no sign to mark the man’s passing. That path twisted through the woods to eventually join the lane a little way from where the village street ran off it. Anyone from the village, including a guest of the Norreys Arms, would have had an easy run home.
Admittedly, the would-be burglar could just as easily have come from farther afield; at that hour, a gig or horse left in the lane wouldn’t have been seen by anyone.
And in the small hours of the morning, no one would have seen the man returning to his lair.
Given that, Rand had jettisoned any notion of pursuing their man by tracking him.
His gaze on the grass before his feet, he passed the kitchen garden and continued up the slope toward the rose garden. The combined scents from the blooms wafted past on a faint breeze, teasing his senses—reminding them of the fascinating, enigmatic, and intriguing lady who tended the bushes.
He knew himself well enough to acknowledge that he was—to his mind, surprisingly—attracted to her. Not just physically, but intellectually, emotionally, and even by dint of his busi
ness. To him, she was a lure of many facets.
After his experience of and his consequent antipathy toward ladies clever enough to manipulate him, he’d assumed that the last lady he would feel drawn to would be one who, in his estimation, possessed a mind capable of running rings around his.
Felicia Throgmorton definitely possessed such a brain. She might hide it, disregard it, yet he, at least, couldn’t overlook it, not after her recent and undeniably critical contributions to the Throgmorton project.
What surprised him was that knowing she possessed such a mind in no way dampened her allure. If anything, that she could and clearly did understand inventing at a fundamental level had only increased his interest in her.
Increased the sense that she—and she alone of all the ladies he’d ever met—somehow fitted.
Fitted him, his life, and the aspirations and private goals he hadn’t—until the last days—thought much about.
His attraction to her—recognition of what sort of attraction it was, its depth and escalating strength, and what, at some point, it would push him to do—had prodded him to focus on those until-now nebulous goals.
He wanted to marry. He wanted a family. He definitely wanted a hearth and a home and a wife to share both with.
In short, he wanted everything Ryder had found with his Mary.
The family at Raventhorne figured in Rand’s mind as the shining epitome of his ultimate desire.
That was what he wanted his life to contain.
Up to now, he’d kept his attention firmly fixed on accomplishing his business goals, telling himself that even defining his more private goals could wait. He was only thirty years old, after all.
Yet the instant he’d seen Felicia Throgmorton on the Hall’s front steps—his virago with rose-gold hair—his senses had focused on her in a way they never had with any other lady and taken his emotions and a good part of his wits with them.
Everything that had happened since—his reactions to Mayhew and the incident of the break-in to the growing ease and understated understanding between Felicia and himself—had only further entrenched his feelings, until, now, they shone as an inner certainty.
The only consideration stopping him from pursuing her openly was the Throgmorton steam engine.
If she didn’t view him in a complementary way, then pressing his suit before the project was successfully completed would make working together on the engine awkward. More, he didn’t know how she might react to a declaration from him; she might even back away from helping William John altogether, and that, he simply could not risk. There were too many people relying on them delivering the project on time.
With her help, he was confident they would succeed. Without her help, he was no longer so sure. All he’d seen to that point seemed to prove that William John’s strengths alone wouldn’t be enough.
So he would wait until they had the engine working and presented it at the exhibition. Then he would ask for her hand.
He nodded to himself, pleased to have thought his way to that clear and unequivocal stance.
Of course, waiting didn’t mean he couldn’t use the time to learn more of her. Indeed, for any number of reasons, it would be wise to gain some understanding of her complicated and convoluted relationship with inventors and inventing.
They’d managed—entirely by chance—to get her into the workshop long enough for her to respond to their need and demonstrate her understanding.
They’d opened a door they hadn’t known existed, and today, they’d managed to wedge that door open.