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  “Quite possibly.” Charles looked around the room. “Magnifying glass?”

  “On the table.”

  Rosie had completely forgotten that she had a grievance against this man. She was so starved of the companionship of fellow biologists that her resentments disappeared in a cloud of shared intellectual fascination. “I have the greatest plan for them,” she went on, bubbling with enthusiasm, as he peered at the creature through the glass. “I am going to try to dry out the habitat very slowly and see if they’ll metamorphose into land animals, as they do in the wild.”

  And then suddenly she remembered whom she was talking to and realized with a shock that not once had she attributed this research to the mythical cousin, who was the real scientist. She bit her lip hard, and lowered the net back into the aquarium.

  “Go on,” Charles said. He was leaning against the table, hands resting on the surface behind him, legs stretched out. His expression was closely attentive.

  Rosie shook her head, closing her mouth firmly.

  “You’re certainly very knowledgeable about your cousin’s research,” Charles observed, eyebrows lifted over shrewd eyes.

  “Yes, well, I told you I assist him,” Rosie said brusquely. “And I shouldn’t have told you all that because you’ll probably steal it.”

  Charles sighed. “Is it the idea that someone got there first that angers you, or the fact that because of it your cousin was not elected to the Royal Society?”

  Rosie took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes. It was not a question she had ever asked herself, but faced with such a blunt choice, she was forced to admit that she could tolerate the idea that two scientists were pursuing the same course of research, even that by some unhappy coincidence they might present their findings at the same time.

  “Supposing I put Ross Balmain’s name forward at the next electoral meeting?” he suggested, correctly interpreting the chagrined recognition in the weak, vulnerable blue eyes. “If I could meet him, discuss his present work with him, then I would be more than happy to support his candidacy on the basis of his present scholarship.”

  “Would you?” Rosie gazed raptly at him, hearing only the last part of his offer. “Could you do that?”

  “I believe so. My reputation is such—”

  “Yes, I know that you are most particularly regarded,” Rosie interrupted, replacing her glasses. “Do you swear you didn’t steal my res … my cousin’s research?”

  “I swear it on my mother’s grave.” Solemnly, he laid a hand on his breast.

  “Oh,” said Rosie.

  “But I can’t do anything until I’ve met Mr. Balmain,” Charles said. “You understand that, of course.”

  “Yes,” Rosie said thinly.

  “Then I shall remain in Lymington, studying the salterns until your cousin returns. Is that a bargain?”

  Rosie nodded, her forehead stitched in a frown. How was she to produce a man who didn’t exist?

  Charles smiled. Such a grave, clever little spitfire. Without thinking, he stepped closer, caught her chin on his thumb and tilted it up. “Bargains should be sealed, Rosie.” He bent his head and lightly kissed her mouth.

  Rosie leaped back as if she’d been burned. “Oh!” She touched her lips. “Oh! I detest you!”

  Charles shook his head. “No you don’t. Ross Balmain detests me. You’re getting confused, my dear.” He caught her chin between finger and thumb. “It’s a bargain.”

  Rosie stared up at him, feeling the warm imprint of his fingers on her chin, the closeness of his mouth hovering over hers. She knew she should pull back, but she didn’t move. And when his mouth came down on hers for a second time, she held herself very still, all her senses concentrated in her lips, analyzing the sensation as closely as if she were analyzing an insect specimen.

  When he released her mouth and drew back, she still didn’t move. “That was most particularly interesting,” she said. “I always wondered what it was like.”

  Charles went into a peal of laughter. “You are a particularly adorable spitfire, Rosie.” He went to the door. “I look forward to seeing you at the river tomorrow.”

  Rosie heard his feet, swift and light, on the stairs. She went to the open door and listened as he made his farewells in the drawing room, a bubble of laughter still in his voice. Then she heard Wellby show him out. The front door closed behind him and the house seemed suddenly very quiet. Reflectively she touched her fingertips to her lips.

  Charles strode down the hill, laughing softly to himself. Either Lady Rosalind had absorbed her cousin’s speech peculiarities together with his research, or something most particularly interesting was afoot. Ross Balmain … Rosie Belmont. Just a little too similar for pure coincidence, surely? It was an extraordinary idea, but one that explained the concerted attack of the four sisters. And he was a scientist. No true scientist closed his mind to any possibility, however unlikely.

  All in all, he decided, his visit to this sleepy Hampshire fishing town was proving unexpectedly entertaining.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  SO IF CHARLES LARCHMONT meets Ross Balmain face-to-face and talks with him, he will support his election to the Royal Society.” Theo had taken her place on Rosie’s bed, propped up against the pillows. She kicked off her satin slippers.

  “But how can he meet a man who doesn’t exist?” Clarissa pointed out, curling into an armchair beside the aquarium.

  “Precisely,” Theo said. “Oh, Emily, is that hot milk?”

  “You said you’d like a nightcap.” Emily, carrying a tray with four steaming mugs, carefully closed Rosie’s door with her foot.

  Theo pulled a wry face. “Normally I’d mean cognac.” She took a cup from the tray. “But for some reason, this miserable stuff looks and smells just wonderful.”

  Rosie, perched on the windowsill, took her own cup with her free hand. In her other, she cradled the green glass bottle, absently tracing its shape with her fingers. She had found herself picking it up without conscious intention but somehow it seemed to calm her, clear her mind. It was strange, she thought, that the glass didn’t warm to the heat of her skin.

  “So, strategy.” Theo returned to the subject of this late-night conference. “We can’t produce Ross Balmain, so we have to persuade Mr. Larchmont that he doesn’t need to meet him to support his election to the Royal Society. Rosie, do you have any ideas? … Rosie!” she prompted when her sister, instead of responding, continued to stare dreamily out into the night.

  “What? I’m sorry.” Rosie turned back to the room.

  “You seem very distracted, love,” Emily observed.

  “You were up here with him for a very long time,” Theo said, regarding Rosie with narrowed eyes. Her sister’s quick flush told a tale. “What happened, Rosie?”

  “He kissed me,” Rosie said with her usual bluntness. “And I seemed to like it. But I’m not interested in that sentimental stuff,” she added, sounding as bemused as she felt.

  Theo fell back against the pillows with a peal of laughter. “Oh, little sister. I’m afraid it comes to us all at some point. Look at me.”

  They all chuckled. Theo’s marriage, following a tempestuous courtship by Sylvester Gilbraith, had been a classic case of against-all-odds.

  “That wasn’t very gentlemanly of him,” Clarry said. “To take advantage of being alone with you, particularly in your own bedroom—and on first acquaintance, too.”

  “Second,” Rosie corrected with customary precision. “Although we didn’t really get into conversation at the river.”

  “If gentlemen were always gentlemen none of us would ever have been kissed,” Theo commented. “But the issue here, it seems to me, is that if Rosie is developing a tendre for Charles Larchmont, then that could tangle this whole business beyond unraveling.”

  “Of course I’m not developing a tendre for him,” Rosie denied vigorously. “I only said I liked being kissed—the sensation, that’s all. You know what I mean.” She threw an almost defiant glare
at her sisters.

  “Oh, yes, we know what you mean,” Emily said with a tiny smile. “But in general, liking the kiss usually means that one likes the man doing the kissing.”

  “Well, that’s not true in my case. I was merely interested in the sensation, since it’s never happened to me before and I know you all like this loving business. I wanted to see what you were talking about.”

  “Well, if that’s all it was, then we don’t have to worry about muddling things,” Theo said, not for a minute convinced by Rosie’s denial, but aware that challenge would not alter her little sister’s stated position. “But since you have developed a … a … rapport with the man, it should help you to persuade him that he doesn’t need to meet with Ross Balmain.”

  “I suppose—”

  “Oh, Rosie! This is disgusting! The pink one’s eating the black one!” Clarissa, after one horrified glance at the aquarium, recoiled. “It’s eating its leg!”

  “Oh, Marchpane said that they do that!” Rosie leaped to her feet and bounded across the room. “They’re very greedy carnivores, but he concluded that eating bits of one another was usually accidental.” She gazed down into the water, adding reflectively, “Although it’s difficult to believe one can attribute motive or lack of it to an axolotl.”

  “Do something, Rosie!” Emily exclaimed.

  “Oh, the leg’ll probably grow back again,” Rosie assured her, taking a piece of meat from the covered plate beside the tank. “Salamanders can regrow their legs and tails.” She dropped the raw flesh into the water and the pink blob ceased nibbling its companion and turned its attention to an alternative food supply.

  “I couldn’t sleep a wink with those things in my room.” Clarissa shuddered.

  “And I don’t think you should keep raw meat up here. It’ll attract flies and bluebottles.” Emily hastily recovered the plate and picked it up. “I’ll take it downstairs on my way to bed.”

  Theo swung herself off the bed. “I’m tired, too. See you in the morning, Rosie.” She kissed her. “It seems that if we can overcome this one hurdle, you’ll be in a fair way to getting your wish. Charles Larchmont appears to be quite a reasonable man on the whole.”

  “Yes,” Rosie agreed, kissing them all good-night.

  “Not to mention personable.” Theo closed the door on this mischievous parting shot.

  Rosie returned to the window seat. She flung the window wider and leaned out, breathing the scent of gillyflowers from the garden beneath. The stars were brilliant over the sea and a crescent moon swung like a cradle. Do not follow the moth to the star. She caressed the little bottle that she’d automatically picked up again. Was wishing to be an accredited scientist wishing for the moon and stars? For a woman, perhaps it was. A woman blind and driven as a moth in search of the light that would consume it.

  But it wasn’t fair. It wasn’t just. She was as good as any man at what she did. She knew it. Charles Larchmont had responded to her as one scientist to another, until…

  Until he’d treated her like a woman. A woman who attracted him. And she couldn’t be both things for him. A woman to be kissed and flirted with, and a scientist and collaborator to be respected.

  Why couldn’t she? But Rosie knew the answer to that. Her world wasn’t constructed to embrace two such roles in one female body.

  She had to make a choice and her choice was clear. If she was to use him to get her wish, then she must forget these strange stirrings. She knew instinctively that if she would, be true to her wish, she must be totally single-minded, otherwise she could find herself in the morass of conflicting desires.

  She slept badly that night, her mind whirring, her body unsettled. Hot, she kicked off the covers, then, chilled, pulled them up tight again. Her mouth was tingling, as it had done after he’d kissed her. She could see his brown eyes hovering in her mind’s eye, the sensuous shape of his mouth, the crisp dark hair waving off his broad, intelligent brow. She could feel the imprint of his hands on her face, and her body burned to feel them against her skin.

  It was ridiculous! She tossed and turned, trying to banish the restless images, to concentrate on how she would go about convincing him that he didn’t need to meet with the man he would support at the society.

  Finally, she fell into a heavy, dreamless sleep just before dawn and it was past midmorning when she awoke. Her first thought was that it had been low tide for an hour. Charles Larchmont had promised to see her at the river and once the tide started to come in again, he would give up whatever collecting he was doing. And she would miss him.

  Rosie leaped from bed. She dressed rapidly in a green holland smock, thrusting her feet into her open leather sandals. She splashed water on her face, plaited her hair roughly, crammed on her wide-brimmed straw hat, then raced down to the kitchen to fetch meat for the axolotls before they turned cannibal again.

  There was no sign of her sisters, and Wellby told her that they had gone visiting with Mrs. Grantley. Rosie grabbed an apple and a hunk of cheese in lieu of breakfast, snatched up her pail and rake, and darted out of the house, running down the hill to the quay.

  CHARLES HAD started wading through the marshy mud as soon as the tide had begun to run out. He had slept wonderfully well, lulled by the creaking rigging, the call of gulls, the sea breeze on his face. He had awoken smiling and the smile was still there as, equipped now with pail, net, and rake, he followed the tide line. Every so often, he would turn and look toward the fast-retreating quay, hoping to see the slight, energetic figure of Lady Rosalind. As the morning progressed and there was no sign of her, his smile began to fade.

  Had he frightened her off? She was clearly inexperienced, an innocent in the games of love, but he had had the impression from her response that he had awoken the sleeping woman. She might maintain that she had permitted the kiss in the interests of scientific inquiry, but Charles, while hardly a rake, was no novice in the arena of love, and he could tell an engaged and willing response from mere endurance.

  But perhaps that was the problem: She had been frightened by her own response. But even if that was true, surely she hadn’t given up on securing his support for the elusive, if not fictional, Ross Balmain?

  When he saw her just before eleven o’clock, he was unprepared for the surge of pleasure. He stood shading his eyes, watching as she jumped down from the quay onto the gravelly beach that led into the marshy mud. She took off her sandals, slinging them by their buckled thongs around her neck, and matter-of-factly kilted up her skirt, revealing her brown calves. A scandalous revelation anywhere else, or in anyone else, he reflected. But Rosie was somehow exempt from the usual rigidities of female conduct.

  The smile had returned to his face as he began to trudge toward her. She seemed to skim across the mud, where he sank with each footstep, but he noticed that her eyes were still directed downward. Three times she stopped, bent, stared immobile at the mud, then straightened with a shake of her head.

  “I had almost given you up,” he said as he reached her.

  Rosie flushed, pushed her hat back off her forehead, said abruptly, “I overslept.” She turned away from him toward the thick marsh grass edging the tide line.

  “What are you collecting?”

  Rosie paused, seeming to debate the question. “Guess.”

  “Artemia salina.”

  “I suppose you’re looking for them, too.” With that, she dived into the grass and was almost lost to view in the tall waving fronds.

  Charles followed her. “Do you have any idea when Mr. Balmain might be returning?”

  “Probably not for months,” she said, her voice somewhat muffled as she bent to her task. “I’m sure I can tell you anything you need to know about his research.”

  I’m sure you can, he thought with an inner chuckle, determined now to flush out the truth. “But you must understand that I need to meet the man. There are details of his present research and possible future paths of interest that I will need to know to present to the society. In fa
ct…” He was seized with a brilliant inspiration. “It would be best if your cousin was to present his own case to the members—with my patronage, of course.”

  Rosie was not given to swearing, but she had picked up a large vocabulary of the necessary language from Theo, who was much less reticent about expressing herself at times of stress. Now Rosie mentally ran through every oath she knew, keeping her eyes on the marsh but for once seeing nothing but mud.

  “I have no way of contacting my cousin, sir.” She moved away from him. “I prefer to collect alone. So if you’ll excuse me.” She pushed aside a break of reeds bounding a small inlet where a thin trickle of water remained. A sailing dinghy sat high and dry among the reeds, moored to a stake. At full tide the inlet would widen into a significant channel and the dinghy could only be reached by rowboat.

  Rosie heard Charles behind her. She struggled to ignore him, but it was impossible, even though he made no further attempt to address her and seemed completely absorbed by the marsh at his feet.

  “Well, I’ll be damned!” he said suddenly. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”

  “What? What have you found?” Rosie straightened hastily.

  “I’m not sure,” he muttered, his nose almost in the mud.

  “Let me see.” Excitedly, Rosie plunged toward him, holding her skirts high. She took a step and sank up to her thigh into a deep water hole in the mud, lost her balance, and toppled forward onto her face, the marsh sucking around her.

  “Sweet heaven, what are you doing?” Charles came up behind her, grabbed her by the waist, and hauled her upright. He burst into laughter at her mud-plastered countenance and then instantly sobered as she flung her arms out wildly, pushing him away.

  “My glasses. I’ve lost my glasses.” She pushed away from him and seemed about to plunge headfirst into the mud again.