Just then, Lucien’s half sister walked through the double arched doors. Her brows lifted toward a widow’s peak of auburn hair, and her lips curled in a wry grin. “Taking a turn about the room, boys? I hear it’s excellent for the constitution.”
“Well, something ought to be after what your brother just made me eat, or else this may be the last you’ll ever see of me.”
“Then, wishes really do come true,” Morgan said as she clutched her hands to her bosom and sighed.
“You wound me, madam.”
She blew him a kiss. “Daggers of fondness, cousin.”
“If the two of you are finished, I should like to continue my study,” Lucien said. “Now, Pell, tell me if you feel the slightest difference in your physiology. Elevated heartbeat? Sharpened sense of smell?”
“I do believe I sense something rather pungent. It smells like a dying bloom and disdain for mankind.” He made a point of sniffing in Morgan’s direction and curling his nose. “Oh, wait. Never mind.”
“I’m surprised you can smell anything at all over the odor of the bay rum you’ve apparently bathed in. I’m sure half the finches in the aviary died as you walked by.” She squinted at him and walked over to the red lacquered sideboard to pour herself a claret. “So tell me, Lucien. I was under the impression that you refused to try your experiments on us. I seem to recall a rather magnanimous speech about taking all the risks yourself. Has that changed, or is this just your way of trying to exterminate our cousin once and for all? Just so you know, I’ll be happy to help you dig the grave.”
“Such a generous soul, your sister.”
Lucien ignored their banter. “There was something different with this one, and I required a control subject. Of course, it would be better if we could simulate the entire experience as it transpired . . .” And for him a female had been present. But that gave him an idea.
Stopping near his sister, he situated his cousin directly in front of her and asked, “Is there anything you feel now?”
As Morgan’s green gaze gleamed like a cat who’d spotted a canary with clipped wings, Pell shifted until his hands were cupped in front of his groin. “Other than a need to protect the family jewels?”
Lucien expelled a defeated breath and turned toward the clock.
It was well beyond the time it had taken him to notice the effects. Why wasn’t it working? What could have been different?
He stalked to the window without paying attention to the lush gardens or the sun on its decline over the verdant rolling hills beyond the ramparts. Instead, he was mentally calculating the possibility of a temperature fluctuation of the pie and wondering if he should drag Pell down to the old buttery while he prepared a fresh sample and have him taste it after a precise allotment of time.
“Perhaps it was just your imagination, cousin.”
“Lucien doesn’t have an imagination. It must have been a fluke.”
“And I don’t believe in flukes. Everything has an explanation.” He raked a hand through his hair. “Damn it all, if I hadn’t been distracted by that woman, I might have been able to pinpoint the changes precisely as they’d occurred.”
“What’s this?” Pell asked, his tone dripping with intrigue. “You let a woman into the old fortress? Ah, so that’s what you’ve really been up to for all those lengthy hours. You’ve finally found someone to polish your sword.”
“Hardly,” he growled as a fresh wave of irritation crashed over him. “She was merely an unwanted distraction. Apparently, Mr. Gudgeon allowed her and her companions to refresh themselves after touring the gardens. I’ve already spoken to him about that, and it won’t happen again.”
“Well, was she pretty? Is that what’s put you in this state?”
Lucien leveled a glare at his cousin. “You know I hold little stock in such things. All I know is that she—whoever she may have been—was a nuisance.”
Pell laughed and plopped down onto the sofa. “Don’t tell me that the master of detail didn’t even get her name? That’s too rich. And it would be my guess that she was incomparably pretty. So much so that she scrambled your wits.”
“Oh, leave Lucien be. Can you not see that he’s frustrated? He’s been waiting years for a shred of proof, and today was the closest he’s ever come,” Morgan said with surprising understanding.
Since his older sister had never been accused of being sympathetic or tenderhearted, Lucien anticipated the delivery of her usual salt into the wound. Like, for example, reminding him that there would have been no trespasser if he hadn’t decided to open the gates to the public for a few hours each week. She’d been harping on him for that decision for the past month, warning him that he was only asking for trouble. In response, he’d told her that they hardly need worry about families with small children touring the garden. Though, clearly, he hadn’t predicted how troublesome one trespasser could be.
He was surprised, however, that Morgan refrained from doling out a smug rebuke.
“Besides,” she continued blandly, “I have it under good authority that her appearance was merely a contrivance to meet you, dear brother.”
“What authority?”
She shrugged. “My maid overheard Mrs. Gudgeon arguing with her husband and calling him a flirt. He defended himself by saying that the only topic of conversation had been in regard to the women and their travels. Apparently, they were on their way to Dover to begin their tour of the Continent. Which may have been true. However . . . they came from Wiltshire. Somerset is a bit out of the way, wouldn’t you agree?” Morgan issued a laugh as Lucien frowned. “Haven’t I always told you, brother? There’s nothing a woman wouldn’t do to seize what she wants. To claim what, she believes, rightfully belongs to her.”
“Cheer up, cousin.” Pell crossed the room to pour another whisky. “I can think of many things worse than having a comely woman steal into my house just to make my acquaintance. At least you know the interloper wasn’t up to anything nefarious.”
As the statement hung in the air, Lucien felt an icy shiver crawl down his spine.
Nefarious. Why hadn’t he thought of that before?
Because he hadn’t been thinking clearly. At least, not until now.
Without a word, he stalked out of the drawing room.
Suspicions on alert, he recalled every minute detail of the day. With each measured footfall through the keep, he composed a comprehensive list of his actions and those of the persons he’d encountered.
His pace quickened. A breeze swept an errant hank of hair from his forehead as he strode through winding corridors that gradually took him to the secret family vault.
He shouldn’t have been worried. After all, only he possessed the key forged to fit the lock. The very key that was hidden inside the dagger he kept in his boot.
And yet . . .
There had been a brief moment when he had unknowingly mislaid it.
He’d been in the buttery and had reached inside his boot to cut off a slice of the meat pie for Pell to sample. But the dirk had not been in his boot. Instead, he’d found it resting beneath the ledger. At the time, however, he’d convinced himself that his eagerness to finally have proof had merely made him forgetful and that he’d removed the blade an instant before.