A Study In Seduction Page 5

  The cosine of theta plus gamma equals the cosine of theta times the cosine of gamma plus the sine of theta times the sine of gamma.

  “I know we’ve talked about her attending Queen’s Bridge, but even with the funds from the locket, it’s too expensive…” Lydia’s voice faded. Something in her grandmother’s expression caused a flutter of panic.

  “I have discussed the matter with Mrs. Keene, whose opinion I implicitly trust,” Mrs. Boyd said. “Mrs. Keene has a widowed aunt who resides in Paris, a baroness whose late husband left her with both a fortune and his good name. Mrs. Keene has corresponded with Lady Montague about a girls’ school she recently opened in the Quartier St. Germain.”

  “No.”

  Mrs. Boyd’s mouth compressed. “I am not asking your opinion, Lydia.”

  “You cannot send Jane all the way to France for her education.” The flutter of panic began to grow, beating hard against her chest. “You can’t do this to her.”

  You can’t do this to me.

  “I am not doing this to her, Lydia,” her grandmother replied. “I am doing it for her.”

  “No. It’s too far. She won’t—”

  “Heavens, Lydia, it is Paris, not the wilds of Africa,” Mrs. Boyd interrupted. “As you pointed out, we cannot afford to send her to any of the better London schools, least of all Queen’s Bridge. Lady Montague, however, owing to my friendship with Mrs. Keene as well as her wish to have a strong initial enrollment, has very kindly offered to provide Jane with a scholarship.”

  “And you accepted?”

  “I intend to, yes.” Mrs. Boyd sighed, her hand moving to fuss with her lace cuffs. “Lydia, I don’t wish to see Jane leave us either. But unless we can find a way to send her to a school in London—an exclusive school, mind you, one that will give her the education we cannot—I have no other choice.”

  She lifted her head. For a long moment, they looked at each other. Lydia’s heart constricted, shrank. A thousand years seemed to fill the space between them, overflowing with regret and the pain of loss.

  She wished her mother were here. Not the woman of the haunted, twisted mind, but the mother she remembered before the descent of darkness. The Theodora Kellaway of laughter and calm, of soft hands and long hair as thick and shiny as wheat.

  And she wished her father were here. She needed his calm, serious approach, his perspective. Despite everything, he’d only ever wanted the best for both her and Jane.

  “You still want to punish me, don’t you?” The question broke from her lips, coarse and crumbled.

  “This is not about you,” her grandmother said. “This is about Jane.”

  “It is about me! You’ll never let me forget what happened when you sent me away, will you?”

  “Lydia!” Mrs. Boyd thumped her cane on the floor. “How dare you suggest this is in any way related to your folly? Lady Montague’s school is new, but it will certainly provide Jane with a place that is both highly instructive and properly supervised.”

  Lydia stared at her. Mrs. Boyd’s mouth clamped shut as she appeared to realize what she’d said. Lydia trembled with a flare of outrage.

  “No.” Her fists clenched, her eyes stinging with hot, angry tears.

  “Lydia—”

  “No. I won’t let you do this. I will not let you take Jane from me!”

  Lydia crossed the room and slammed the door behind her. She drew in a long breath, her fingers tightening on her skirt, her blood racing through her veins.

  The clock in the foyer ticked. Shadows swept across the stairs, reflected in the mirror, an ominous blend of dark and light.

  Anger and hurt churned through Lydia, dredging up remnants of shame. She yanked open the front door. Once outside, she walked faster and faster until she was running, the night air stinging her face. She ran until her lungs ached, and then she slowed, gasping, pulling her arms around her body to hold in the hurt and block out the cold.

  She sank onto the steps of a darkened town house, fighting to catch her breath and calm her racing heart.

  Memories surfaced, but she ruthlessly shoved the images away, not wanting to see her mother’s emaciated frame, her father’s sallow, despairing expression, her grandmother’s fury.

  Not wanting to see a pair of cold green eyes that could still cut her like glass.

  She shuddered. The chill spread to the center of her heart.

  After what seemed a very long time, she lifted her head from her knees. A layer of fog coated the sky, suffocating the moon and the light of the stars.

  She rose and walked to Dorset Street. Several black cabriolets waited at a stand for hire.

  A driver looked at her with mild curiosity before giving a short nod at her request. He ushered her into the cab and slammed the door shut.

  Lydia closed her eyes as the cab began moving toward Oxford Street.

  If p is a prime number, then for any integer a, ap − a will be evenly divisible by p.

  The derivative of uv equals u derivative v plus derivative u times v.

  “Twelve Mount Street, miss.”

  Lydia opened her eyes. Light glowed in several windows of the brick town house. She was foolish to come here again. She knew that, and yet she asked the driver to wait, then approached the door and rang. No response. Her heart clenched. She rang again.

  The door opened to reveal a straight-backed footman. “Yes?”

  “Lord Northwood, please. I am Lydia Kellaway.”

  “One moment.” He stepped aside to allow her to enter, then disappeared soundlessly up the stairs.

  After a moment, a square of light appeared from the upper floor, and Lord Northwood strode toward her, each step so certain he appeared to be securing the ground beneath his feet. His lack of hesitation, the strength that radiated from him, made Lydia ache with the wish to possess such assurance.

  “Miss Kellaway?” He frowned, glancing through the half-open door at the cab. “Are you all right?”

  “I… I don’t have any—”

  “Come inside. I’ll take care of it.” He gestured to the footman to pay the cab fee before turning back to Lydia. “What are you doing here?”

  “I’ve come…” Lydia took a breath and lifted her head to meet his gaze. “I’ve come to settle my debt.”

  Did she feel the same?

  She didn’t look the same. She was older, of course, the edges of her face harder, the curiosity, the anticipation extinguished from her eyes, from her movements. Replaced with tight composure.

  Only once since Joseph had returned to London did he notice her falter—just after her father’s funeral when she’d been standing outside the church with the girl, who’d turned to wrap her arms around Lydia’s waist and sob.

  Then Lydia had visibly struggled with her own tears. A crack in her self-possession.

  Before the girl had pulled away from her, a mask of calm, of reassurance, had descended over Lydia’s face.

  The girl. Jane. A plain name, though she was pretty enough. She was intelligent, too, if her letters were anything to judge by. However, he required more time to probe the actual depths of her mind.

  “Sir? We’re here.” The cabdriver was peering at him.

  He nodded, then flicked his hand to indicate the driver should return to his seat. “Back to Bethnal Green.”

  As the cab rattled away, he watched Lydia Kellaway disappear into the Mount Street town house, the tall silhouette of a man at her side.

  Joseph chuckled. She might be older, but apparently her needs were the same. She was rising above her station, though, if the neighborhood was anything to judge by.

  Or was she?

  He knew the Kellaways had been in financial straits, even before Sir Henry’s death. What if Lydia had found a way to earn money using the talents of her body rather than her mind?

  Fancy town houses here on Mount Street. Belonging to wealthy people. He would soon find out who lived at number twelve.

  Chapter Four

  After ordering tea,
Alexander watched as Lydia sank onto the sofa in the drawing room. Her hands trembled as she lifted them to smooth back her disheveled hair, confined only by a ribbon at the back of her neck. Red blotches marred her smooth skin, and puffy circles ringed her eyes. She stared at the floor, her chest hitching with every breath.

  A surge of something fierce and protective rose in Alexander. He stood behind a chair, his grip tight on the polished wood.

  He wanted to pull Lydia hard into his arms, to feel her slacken against him, to fix whatever it was that caused her such distress. The realization, the intensity of the feeling, startled him. He dragged a hand over his hair, unable to stop looking at her.

  “Miss Kellaway.” He forced his voice to remain steady, not wanting to frighten her away with the urgency of his need to know. “Has someone harmed you?”

  She laughed, a bleak, harsh sound. “Not in the way you think.”

  “You can tell me the truth.”

  “That is the truth.”

  “You’re certain.”

  “Yes.” She nodded, her fingers twisting and untwisting the folds of her skirt. “I’m not… It’s not what you imagine.”

  “Then what is it?”

  “A personal issue, a… It doesn’t matter.”

  “It does to me.”

  “Does it?” She lifted her head, her blue eyes dark with anger and frustration. “Don’t you merely want the payment of my debt? That’s why I’m here. Take it. Kiss me.”

  Alexander shook his head. “Not like this.”

  “There was no condition attached to your request.”

  “There is now.”

  A knock at the door preceded the footman’s entry with a tea tray. Alexander nodded his thanks as Giles turned to leave. He waited until the door had closed before reaching to pour the tea, adding sugar to one cup before pressing it into Lydia’s hands.

  “What condition?” she asked.

  “I will not kiss you when you are in evident distress. Aside from the fact that such an act would be misguided, if kissing me were to intensify your misery… well, I don’t believe my pride could withstand such a blow.”

  The shadow of a smile curved her lips. “Your pride appears quite capable of withstanding much worse, my lord.”

  “Perhaps. Though I’ve no intention of finding that out.” His eyebrows drew together as he watched her take a sip of tea. Her lips closed around the thin edge of the cup, her throat rippling.

  Alexander waited an interminable few minutes for her to further compose herself. Then he asked again, “What happened?”

  Her eyes darkened to the color of lapis lazuli. She shook her head, tendrils of thick hair moving against her neck. When she spoke, sorrow weighted her voice.

  “I sometimes feel… very powerless.”

  Alexander had no idea how to respond to that simple statement. On the one hand, it made no sense coming from a woman with as brilliant, as perceptive, a mind as hers. On the other hand, she spent her time devising equations about love, a task Alexander knew would lead nowhere.

  Silence stretched, flexed between them like a living entity.

  He cleared his throat, wishing for a fleeting instant that Sebastian were here. Sebastian would know what to say. His brother possessed a natural ability to make women feel safe, protected. They confided in him, trusted him. Not like Alexander, whose reputation for remoteness had some basis in fact, especially after the catastrophe of his failed engagement.

  Lydia’s mouth twisted as she set her cup on the tray. “But that’s neither here nor there, is it?”

  “What sort of power do you seek?”

  “None that I might obtain, so why bother naming it?”

  He studied her, the bend of her neck, the way her eyelashes made shadows on her cheekbones. “I know you possess a fine, sharp mind. That your aptitude for numbers has earned you respect among the highest academic echelons.”

  “How did you come by such knowledge?”

  “I asked about you. Your name carries respect, Miss Kellaway.”

  “My name carries curiosity, my lord. Like that of a South American tapir or a circus performer.”

  He shook his head. “You’re wrong.”

  “Am I?” She lifted a hand to smooth her hair away from her forehead. “I don’t mean to sound as if I pity myself. Or as if I don’t value my own mind. I merely ask that you don’t attempt to convince me that my abilities endow me with authority over anything except equations. They don’t. I learned that long ago.”

  “Yet mathematicians and university professors consult you about their work.”

  “Yes. Exactly that. The work. Our discourse is purely academic.” Something appeared to harden within her as she met his gaze again. “My point, Lord Northwood, is that my mathematical skill is quite a distinct entity from the rest of my existence. Command over one area of life does not translate to another.”

  “It can.”

  “Not in my case. I feel a great sense of power in solving equations, in proving theorems. But it ends within the restricted world of mathematics.”

  Alexander let out a breath. “I can’t admit to being the most productive student. However, even I know that mathematics is hardly a restricted world. In school I learned about the mathematical formulas applied to Renaissance art. There are connections between music and mathematics I couldn’t begin to understand. Managing an estate the size of my father’s requires a constant balancing of income versus expenditure, of figuring rent and—”

  Lydia held up a hand. “That’s very well and good, my lord, but please understand that my experience bears out quite differently. In my world, mathematics is indeed restricted.”

  Like you.

  The two words punched through his head. He stood, restless anger stirring in his gut, and began pacing.

  “What do you want, Miss Kellaway?”

  “I don’t… I didn’t have anywhere else to go. I thought of—”

  “No.” The word came out hard, abrupt. He spun to look at her, his hands clenching at his sides. “What do you want?”

  “From you?”

  “For you.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “What do you want? What would help you obtain this elusive sense of power?”

  She blinked. Her expression seemed to close off, as if she sought to suppress a myriad of surfacing thoughts. “I don’t know.”

  “You do know. What is it?”

  “Sir, I am not a fool. I know my place, my position. Dreaming of what can never be is illogical and senseless.”

  “What makes you think it can never be?”

  Amusement shone in her eyes, faint and yet sparkling with the promise of brilliance. If Lydia Kellaway ever allowed herself to experience full, unrestrained laughter, it would be a thing of beauty.

  “You’re a romantic, are you, Lord Northwood?” she asked. “Believing things might happen merely because we wish them so.”

  “Or because we make them happen.”

  “Easy enough for you to say.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Even before we… before I made your acquaintance, I’d heard about you. Though I meant it when I said I dislike gossip, I can still determine some elements of truth.”

  “And what is the truth about me, Miss Kellaway?”

  “That you’ve sought for two years to restore your family’s reputation in a very public and unapologetic manner.” She glanced down at her cup and quietly added, “Unlike your father. Your work with the Society of Arts, trade regulations, numerous charities, lectures, clubs, and now an international exhibition… it all speaks to your philosophy of generating change.”

  She looked resigned, as if the condensed report of his efforts had somehow dispirited her. As if she spoke of something she wanted and yet would never possess. Alexander began to pace again, aware of a nagging discomfort.

  “That is all true enough,” he finally allowed. “Though I’ve had little choice in the matter. If I didn’t do
something, no one would.”

  “Oh, you had a choice, Lord Northwood. We always have a choice.”

  “No. Given the current difficulties with Russia, my family’s ties to the country are increasingly maligned. What choice do I have in that?”

  “You’ve a choice in how you respond to such intolerance.”

  Alexander turned his head to look at her, struck again by the sense that Lydia Kellaway’s composure was something both durable and imperfect, like a solid Greek amphora marked with cracks and flaws.

  “What was your choice?” he asked.

  For an instant, she didn’t speak, though some fleeting, raw emotion passed across her features.

  “Not one I care to elucidate.” She took another sip of tea and stood, smoothing the wrinkles from her skirt. “I do apologize for intruding upon you yet again. It was reckless and very imprudent.”

  “I think you ought to be reckless and imprudent more often, Miss Kellaway.”

  “Then your thoughts are extremely mistaken.”

  “Are they?”

  “Yes.” Her jaw tightened with irritation, her chin lifting. “I’m no longer a young woman, my lord. My days of recklessness are long past.”

  “In all honesty, I find it difficult to imagine you ever had days of recklessness.”

  “Good.” She started toward the door.

  “Tell me what you want, Miss Kellaway.”

  She stopped. Her back stiffened, her shoulders drawing back. “I will not have this discussion.”

  “Tell me what you want and you can have the locket back.”

  She spun around, her skin reddening with anger. “How dare you manipulate me!”

  “It’s a fair trade.”

  “It is not. No trade is fair when the winner also loses.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means you haven’t a care for either of the things being exchanged,” Lydia said. “The locket means nothing to you and everything to me. My wishes mean nothing to you and everything to me. So I tell you what you want to hear and win the locket back, but I’ve still lost, haven’t I? You’ve still gotten what you want.”

  “Forget the locket, then. Just tell me.”