When You Wish Page 3

  “Oh, yes!” Rosie clapped her hands. “We’ll make him squirm.”

  “We might even persuade him to reconsider his position,” Theo mused.

  “How?”

  “I don’t know yet, Emily.”

  “Perhaps we could shame him into it,” Clarry suggested. “You are sure, Rosie, that he stole your research?”

  “Oh, perfectly,” Rosie declared. “The Royal Society had my paper four weeks before this Larchmont toad decided to claim he’d discovered the new classification before I did. If he had, why hadn’t he published it already?”

  “We shall ask him,” Theo said. “We shall prepare an inquisition for the gentleman that’ll burn him more surely than all the fires of the Spanish Inquisition.”

  “We’ll need to explain the situation to Elizabeth.”

  “Oh, she already knows. I had to explain the letters to Ross Balmain.”

  “Then we have only to prepare a reception for the toad.” Theo went to the door. “I’m going to rest before dinner,” she announced with a touch of defiance. “But don’t anybody dare tell Sylvester how feeble I am.”

  Emily and Clarissa grinned and followed her out.

  Rosie looked at the green glass bottle in her hand. She unfurled the leather again and read the message. To thine own wish be true.

  She had only one wish, one all-consuming wish. Somehow she would become a member of that august group of scientists who made up the Royal Society. She would share in the excitements of others’ discoveries; she would finally have fellow scientists to talk to about all the wonderful things that filled her life. She belonged there. And she would get there despite Charles Larchmont.

  Whatever it took—she would be absolutely true to her own wish.

  CHAPTER THREE

  I CAN’T GIVE ye a private parlor, sir, don’t ’ave one. But the snug’s quiet enough of a Tuesday. I doubt you’ll be disturbed there while ye ’ave a bite of dinner.” The landlord of the Green Goose on the Winchester Road delivered his message with arms folded across an ample belly, then waited for his prospective customer’s response.

  “That’ll be fine,” the tall, lean young man said briskly, removing his high-crowned beaver hat. “Have the lad take my horse. I’ve ridden him hard today so he’ll need a rub-down and a bran mash.”

  The landlord clicked his fingers at the stable lad, who came running to take the reins of the handsome gray hunter. “If’n ye’d come this way, yer honor, I’ll show you into the snug and the lad’ll carry your bag up to the best bedchamber.”

  It was clear to the host of the Green Goose that his customer was of the Quality. His riding britches were the softest buckskin, the gleam of his top boots spoke of champagne polish, and his coat had the fit of a master tailor.

  “Ye’ll be glad of a bottle of best burgundy, I dare swear, sir.” He flung open the door of the snug at the back of the taproom. The air was still heavy with the residue of the previous evening’s pipe smoke. Charles Larchmont glanced up at the row of pipes of every description hanging above the bar awaiting their owners as he drew off his York tan gloves, tossing them with his whip on the bar counter.

  “Draw me a tankard of October ale, first,” he said. “It was a hot and dusty ride.”

  “Aye, quite a heat wave we’ve been ‘avin’,” mine host agreed, drawing ale from the keg. “I ’ear it’s powerful bad in London. Fever an’ all.” He plunked the foaming pewter tankard in front of his customer, who bent his head and expertly skimmed off the froth as it flowed over the edge, before lifting the tankard and thirstily gulping the contents.

  The landlord regarded this expertise with approval. No dandified gent this one. Probably one of the Corinthian set, although he looked too slender to be at home in the boxing ring. Probably quick, though, the innkeeper amended, and he rode a prime beast, so it was to be assumed he had a preference for blood sports.

  “Do you know a town called Lymington?”

  “Oh, aye. An hour’s ride from here,” the landlord said. “Pretty little place. Good fishing in the estuary. Crabbing an’ the like.”

  “Do you know the principal families there?” Charles drained his tankard and pushed it across for a refill. “Have one yourself.”

  “Why, thankee, sir. Well, now, there’s the Watsons up at the ’All.” The landlord busied himself at the keg. “Then there’s Dr. Sterling and Squire Jessup.”

  Charles frowned. “Is that all?” He addressed his refilled tankard.

  The landlord wiped foam from his mouth with the back of his hand. “Let me see now. Oh, aye, of course there’s the Grantleys.”

  A flicker crossed Mr. Larchmont’s calm brown eyes. “They have a visitor?”

  The landlord frowned. “As to that, sir, I wouldn’t know. Mrs. Grantley’s goddaughter is often there, I believe. But we don’t ’ear too much of Lymington goings-on this far afield.” He pushed himself away from the counter. “I’ll see about yer dinner, then. A nice boiled cutlet and a piece of Christchurch salmon? ’Ow does that sound?”

  “Admirable. And you may bring me that burgundy now.”

  The landlord bowed himself out and Charles Larchmont drained his tankard and wandered over to the small window that looked out onto a cottage garden, massed with wallflowers, purple stock, and foxglove. The rose bushes were in full bloom and honeysuckle clambered thickly up the brick wall. As he watched, a woman appeared with a basket. She disappeared into a thicket of canes on which were massed the flowers of runner beans.

  Dinner, Charles decided, would be plain but good. He sat down on the settle, stretching his legs to the empty hearth, and drew out the vexatious letter that had brought him halfway across southern England.

  This Ross Balmain was a most intemperate creature. Young, Charles had decided at the very beginning of this irksome business. Only the very young would plunge into streams of invective, unhampered by cool thought. Only the very young would imagine that Charles Larchmont, one of the most prominent biologists in the country, would steal someone else’s research. He had tried the calm approach. He had tried to defuse the situation. He had complimented young Balmain on the quality of his research, the excellence of his paper. He had assured the young man that although this piece of work didn’t qualify him for election to the Royal Society, he had no doubt that it would not be long before such a gifted scientist achieved entrance into that holy of holies. And all he’d received for his pains was a stream of hotheaded, insulting letters, accusing him of the worst offense in academia.

  He looked down at the letter in his hand. The impassioned accusations leaped off the page. Most particularly deceitful Particularly cowardly. The work of a most particular dastard. Ross Balmain had a particular penchant for the word particular.

  Charles wondered why he was bothering to attempt to placate and convince such an offensive youth. But he knew why. Balmain’s research had all the marks of the passionate yet meticulous scientist. He had heard the exultation coming through the dry academic phrases as the stages of research had been documented and he knew that here wrote a kindred spirit. Someone with whom he could collaborate, even. This was a talent … a gift … to be nurtured, despite the immature passions of one not yet able to translate the cool head needed for exacting research into the wider world.

  Thoughtfully, he replaced the letter in his pocket. The address he’d been writing to was Grantley House, High Street, Lymington. Presumably the Grantleys had guests other than the goddaughter.

  The return of the landlord put a stop to his speculations. He watched with all the interest of a healthy appetite as a serving girl set a round table in the window for his dinner. His host drew the cork on a dusty bottle, held up a glass to the light to check for dust or smears before pouring the ruby wine. “There y’are, yer honor. I think ye’ll find that satisfactory.”

  “I’m sure I shall.” Charles sipped and leaned back against the settle with a sigh of contentment. First thing in the morning he would ride to Lymington, put up at a pleasant inn,
and present himself at Grantley House. It would probably be a wasted exercise and he’d meet only with confrontation and rudeness but he wouldn’t be able to put the whole distasteful business behind him until he’d met face-to-face with his young accuser.

  He slept well and awoke with the dawn, lying in the cradling warmth of the feather bed listening to the chattering birds in the sloping eaves outside his window. It was very quiet after the rattling hubbub of the streets outside his London house on Ebury Street. He liked city life, found the cries of street vendors, the rumble of iron wheels on the cobbled streets, the cacophonous music made by a crowded metropolis to be a perfect background to his working hours in the large room that served as both study and laboratory. He needed the sense of a busy world outside his own walls to counterbalance the solitude of research. And for the same reason, he needed his town friends, with whom he rode, fenced, drove racing curricles, and sparred. As a result, the Larchmont estate in Lincolnshire rarely saw its owner except in hunting season.

  He breakfasted in the sunny cottage garden, took his leave of his obliging hosts, and rode off down the Winchester Road armed with instructions for a shortcut, as the crow flies, to Lymington. The route brought him to the estuary of the Lymington River and the cluster of fishermen’s cottages, boatyards, and chandlers’ stores at the base of the steep hill, High Street, that led up through the little town, lined with shops, inns, and substantial houses.

  The smell of seaweed, marsh, and the crisp salt of the open sea, into which the river flowed, filled his nostrils as he rode along a narrow, twisting street that emerged on the town quay. The Ship inn was a prosperous-looking establishment, as his hosts at the Green Goose had promised. It stood foursquare on the quay looking up the river. Masts and rigging from the flotilla of boats moored at the quay creaked in the breeze; gulls and curlews screamed shrilly as they swooped and dived over the water. It was low tide and the river was a narrow channel running between the salterns of black marsh mud.

  Charles dismounted, looped the reins over a black iron hitching post, and strolled to the edge of the stone quay. His gaze dropped to the fertile mud. He frowned, remembering something. The Lymington salterns were the home of Artemia salina. The tiny brine shrimp were not found anywhere else in England. He squatted on his haunches, gazing down, heedless of the curious stares of fisherfolk tending their nets on the quay. An immaculately dressed gentleman in a high-crowned beaver hat almost sitting in the dirt staring at the riverbed was a strange sight.

  With an air of resolution, Charles suddenly straightened, turned, fetched his horse, and led him to the Ship. He couldn’t paddle in the river without waders and canvas ducks, two items of clothing it hadn’t occurred to him to bring on this mission. But then, he hadn’t expected any bonuses on what he’d assumed would be a merely tiresome journey. A shopping expedition was in order.

  An hour later, equipped with a pair of baggy sailcloth trousers, into which his ruffled white shirt was somewhat incongruously tucked, and thigh-high waders, Charles jumped down from the quay into the river shallows and set out across the tidal marsh to see what he could see.

  The first thing he saw was a figure bending close to the mud at the very tide line of the narrow channel. A figure in a yellow dress kilted up around her calves. He stopped to watch her. She was examining the mud around her buried feet with a small rake, every now and again picking something out and dropping it into the pail beside her.

  A fisherman’s daughter picking clams and mussels, Charles assumed, making his way toward her.

  “Is it a rich harvest?” he asked amiably as he drew close. The girl didn’t appear to notice him for a minute, then she turned to look at him. He had an impression of a small, serious face dwarfed by a pair of thick-rimmed spectacles, dark brown hair escaping from the brim of a large straw hat that shaded the back of her neck. She seemed slight, not at all a red-cheeked, sturdy fisherman’s lass.

  She appeared to consider the question as if it had deeper meaning than its mere surface pleasantry before she said somewhat elliptically, “It’s a neap tide,” then returned to her raking.

  The mud would be less rich during neaps than spring tides, Charles reflected. Presumably that was what she meant. She obviously wasn’t interested in furthering their embryonic acquaintance, so he nodded courteously to her bent back and walked farther along, keeping his eyes on the mud.

  Rosie turned her head to watch him as he walked away. She frowned. For all her myopia, she was very observant and her one quick glance had left her puzzled. He was dressed like a fisherman, except for that shirt. But he hadn’t spoken like a fisherman. His voice had a very pleasant timbre to it with the crisp vowels of educated speech.

  What was an educated stranger doing probing the tide line? A possible answer came to her in a rush. Charles Larchmont? But her tormentor was an old man, fussy and pompous. This stranger couldn’t be more than thirty. Younger than Sylvester, older than Jonathan. More like Edward’s age.

  She tried to return to her harvesting but her concentration was broken and she felt annoyingly disturbed by her unknown companion on the mud, even though he was not paying her the slightest attention. Crossly, she gathered up her equipment, slung her sandals around her neck, and squelched her barefoot way back to the quay, where she sat on a rock and washed her feet in the clear river water.

  Charles turned back to the inn, satisfied by his reconnaissance that he could put his visit to Lymington to good use. He saw the girl dabbling her feet in the river. Her hat was beside her on the rock and he could see that her hair was so dark as to be almost black, fastened in a braided coronet around her head. She looked up suddenly, as if aware of his scrutiny, and he could feel the scorching power of her glare behind the glasses despite the distance that separated them. His interruption must have upset her. Shrugging, he continued back to the inn and by the time he reached the quay, the girl had gone.

  He had decided to pay his visit to the Grantleys in the early afternoon, during traditional visiting hours. It would serve to break the ice, and if young Mr. Balmain’s animosity was clearly immutable, then he would have every excuse to keep the visit very short.

  He walked up the hill, enjoying the atmosphere of the small town with its bow-fronted shops, cobbled lanes, air of busy prosperity. It seemed everyone knew everyone else. Landaulets and barouches blocked the street as their occupants exchanged greetings; pedestrians gathered in small clots on corners deep in conversation. They regarded the stranger with affable curiosity, offering nods of greeting as he passed.

  Grantley House was a moderate-sized gentleman’s residence, its red brick soft in the afternoon sunlight. A small walkway bordered with sweet alyssum and pansies led to the front door. He banged the shiny brass knocker and waited. The door was opened by an elderly retainer.

  “Mr. Ross Balmain, please. I believe I’m expected.” Charles handed the butler his card.

  Wellby looked at the white engraved square. “If you’d like to step into the hall, sir, I’ll inform the young ladies.”

  Young ladies? Charles stepped into the hall. What had young ladies to do with his business with Ross Balmain? The butler disappeared, leaving Charles to inhale the scents of beeswax and lavender, to note the elegant curve of the staircase, the handsome furnishings, the highly polished wood, brass, and silver. The house was of only moderate size but it was unmistakably the abode of a well-to-do family of impeccable taste. He occupied himself with a series of portraits on the staircase, wondering idly if Mr. Balmain would show any resemblance to the genial, aristocratic faces that gazed serenely out at him.

  Wellby hurried, in as far as such a word could be applied to his stately progress, through the drawing room and out onto the terrace, where the four Belmont sisters were gathered.

  “Mr. Larchmont has sent in his card, Lady Rosie.” He handed the card to her.

  “So soon!” Rosie exclaimed, examining the card with an air of acute distaste.

  “We’re not quite ready for him,”
Theo said. “One of us should go and tell him we can’t receive him at the moment, but invite him to join us after dinner for tea.”

  “And then we’ll roast him,” Rosie declared gleefully.

  “Over hot coals,” Theo agreed with a grin. “What do you think, Clarry?”

  Clarissa wrinkled her pert nose. “Emily should see him now. She has the most presence and charm—not that you aren’t charming, Theo, but—”

  “I’m nowhere near as gracious as Emily, or as poised,” Theo agreed cheerfully. “And you’ll get too easily distracted, Clarry. So, Emily, you’re it.”

  Emily stood up, smoothing down the skirt of her saffron muslin afternoon gown. She patted the ringlets clustering around her face and straightened the ruffles at the high neck of her gown. “Do I look matronly?”

  “No, of course you don’t,” her sisters exclaimed in unison.

  “Well, the way you’ve just described me seemed to imply it,” Emily said. “Gracious, poised. You’ll be saying matronly next.”

  “Oh, what nonsense!” Theo jumped up and hugged her. “It’s just that the rest of us are so ramshackle.”

  “You and Rosie are,” Clarissa protested, but without heat. “I don’t consider myself to be ramshackle in the least.”

  “No, but you’re a dreamer, and you’ve become much more so since you married Jonathan,” Rosie said bluntly. “You both waft around like rose petals.”

  Clarissa was much struck with this image. “Jonathan is rather like a rose petal. He’s so beautiful and he has such a wonderful scent.”

  “Clarry!” Theo protested. “We all know you found your parfit gentil knight, but there’s no need to go overboard.”

  “Well, I’m going,” Emily stated, licking her fingertips and smoothing the delicate arch of her eyebrows.