This time, her father and brother had embarked on a gamble that might not pay off.
She nudged the basket along with her foot and reached for the next dead rose.
Unlike previous projects, where she’d insisted they worked only with capital they already possessed and also left untouched a cushion of funds on which the household could fall back on should the project fail, this time, there was no cushion. No funds to fall back on.
No way to keep going.
Snip.
This time, if the invention failed, they would have to sell the Hall and let the staff go. There’d been Throgmortons at the Hall for generations; everyone would be devastated. The loss of their home would hurt William John even more; without his laboratory-workshop, he would be rudderless. As for her...she had no idea what such a future would hold for her, other than that it would be bleak. She’d had her Season in London and hadn’t taken—and she hadn’t taken to life in the capital, either; it had been far too superficial for her taste. Now, at the age of twenty-four, the best she could hope for was a life as a paid companion or as an unpaid poor relative in one of her distant cousins’ households.
If she’d been a different sort of female, she might have given way to despair, but she didn’t have time for any such indulgence. As far as she could tell, there was one and only one way to avoid the abyss that had opened up before them—William John had to get the dratted modified steam engine to work.
Snip.
If she wanted to save the household, the Hall, William John, and herself, she needed to do all she could to keep her brother’s mind focused on that task and ensure that all possible burdens were lifted from his shoulders.
William John was a year older than she was, but it had long been she who managed everything around him.
A distant step on the gravel path circling the house had her raising her gaze. Lord Cavanaugh—he who, from her year’s experience of London society, she had instantly recognized as belonging to the too-handsome-for-his-own-good brigade—was crossing the lawn. He wasn’t out strolling; there was nothing idle about his stride. He’d seen her and, apparently, was intent on speaking with her.
While ostensibly clipping another dead rose, she watched him approach. Over six feet tall, with wide shoulders, a well-muscled chest, narrow hips, and long, stron
g legs, he cut a powerful figure, well-proportioned and rangy. Also distinctly mature; she judged him to be in his early thirties. He was still wearing the clothes he’d arrived in—a fashionably cut coat over a fine linen shirt, a neatly tied ivory cravat, tightly fitting buff breeches, and top boots. The subdued style, exquisite cut, and expensive fabrics marked him as a gentleman of the ton’s upper echelons, yet it was his features that had prompted her to give him the label she had; his dark, walnut-brown hair, the thick locks fashionably trimmed, framed a face of cool calculation tinged with the autocratic arrogance often found in those of the higher nobility.
He was a marquess’s son, after all.
The long planes of his face were spare, even austere, with sharp cheekbones on either side of a patrician nose, and firm, chiseled lips above a squarish chin. Straight dark-brown eyebrows and surprisingly thick dark lashes set off those eyes of molten caramel that she’d already discovered were unwarrantedly distracting.
Those eyes were currently trained on her. Trapped under his gaze, to her irritation, she felt her lungs contract until breathlessness threatened. And the closer he came, the worse the effect grew.
Her father’s cousin, Flora, who lived at the Hall and was nominally Felicia’s chaperon, had already been won over by Cavanaugh when, in the immediate aftermath of the recent explosion, he’d attentively assisted her to the bench by the front steps.
Flora had heard his name when he’d introduced himself; as soon as she’d caught her breath, rather than join Felicia, Cavanaugh, and William John in the drawing room, Flora had rushed upstairs and combed through her correspondence.
Flora’s correspondents numbered in the multiple dozens, all ladies like herself for whom keeping abreast of everything to do with the haut ton was a lifelong occupation.
Courtesy of Flora, Felicia now knew that Lord Randolph Cavanaugh was the second son of the late Marquess of Raventhorne and was wealthy and eligible in every way—no real surprise there—but to the consternation of the grandes dames, Lord Randolph tended to avoid the ballrooms and, consequently, was as yet unmarried. That, she had to admit, was surprising and had raised a question—purely a curious one—in her mind. What would it take in a lady to interest Lord Randolph Cavanaugh?
The object of her purely idle curiosity reached the entrance to the rose garden. From the corner of her eye, she watched as, his gaze fixed on her, he ducked beneath the archway and slowed to a prowl. He pretended to glance at the roses, then, as he halted a yard away, returned his gaze to her.
She really did not like the way her nerves were tightening in response to his focused look. Before he could speak, she briefly glanced his way. “We keep country hours. Dinner will be served at six o’clock.”
One of his dark brows faintly arched. “So I’ve been informed.”
His voice was deep, a purring rumble.
Lips and chin firming, she reached for another rose hip. Anything to force herself to look away from him—to give herself a reason for doing so. Admittedly, in the drawing room, he’d almost flabbergasted her by asking her opinion—asking for her agreement in forging on as they were—yet she wasn’t at all sure that had she disagreed, he wouldn’t simply have ignored her stance.
Gentlemen like him might well possess ingrained manners and act on them without thinking. That didn’t mean he’d actually cared about how she felt, and she would be a fool to further encourage him.
Snip.
“I saw you out here and thought I’d get some air—and kill two birds with one stone.”
Inside, she stiffened. Air she understood, but what else was he thinking to slay?
When he didn’t immediately offer up a clue, her wits—unaccountably skittering in myriad directions though they were—came up with the answer. She debated for only a second; better she keep the reins of any conversation in her hands, and she stood to learn as much about him from his questions as he stood to learn from any answers she deigned to give. Pausing in her pruning, she slanted him a glance. “What do you wish to know?”