Saving the Scientist (The Restitution League #2)(21)
“We need to get out of here.” He waved at her to follow him. “We’ll stay to the center of the pavement until we get to Trafalgar Square. There’ll be an omnibus along soon.”
Ada stuffed the silly hat onto her head with an angry gesture. “How do you do that?”
“Do what?” He glanced behind them, needing to locate their pursuer.
“Were we not just this second discussing the lamentable tendency for men to run roughshod over—”
“We’re being followed.” Edison put a hand to the small of her back, urging her onward. “You can insult me later.”
Back straight, wide brim of her hat quivering, Ada surged forward fast enough to evade his touch. “Be assured, I shall take you up on that offer, Mr. Sweet.”
Chapter 7
Ada scanned the opening lines of the sensation novel then slammed it shut and shoved it back into the display outside the bookshop. No one could survive an explosion like that. Anyone with any sense at all would know iodine combined with ammonia would produce a hellish firestorm of a reaction. And yet the heroine had escaped unharmed, but for a few smudges to her nightgown and a bad case of amnesia.
Rubbish.
She grabbed another title from the display. Perhaps she wasn’t giving the books a fair try. Even if she had an inclination toward pleasure reading—which she decidedly did not—the noxious mix of anger and fear roiling about in her stomach would have made concentration impossible.
Intent on chasing down their shadow, Edison has stuck her in front of the bookseller’s display with instructions to thumb through the offerings while he circled back to trap their pursuer.
He hadn’t asked. Hadn’t sought her opinion or her consent. He simply acted.
She wasn’t sure what angered her more, his high-handed manner or the idiocy of his paper-thin plan. If one could refer to a spur-of-the-moment impulse as a plan. A thousand things could go wrong. She’d already thought of at least ten.
There could be more than one person following them.
The man could be armed.
He could render Edison unconscious.
Or kill him.
Despite her anger, the thought made her hands shake and her knees tremble.
His presence the past few days had forced her to realize her device attracted danger. Real danger, not some theoretical possibility.
A something woman sidled up next to her and plucked a book from the display. “Have you read the latest Caldwell Nance? I think he’s divine. Such daring heroines. If only we could have such excitement!”
Ada eyed the row of titles. “I’m not sure it wouldn’t grow tiresome, all that chasing about. The explosions alone would be exhausting.”
The woman gave her an odd look and moved off, the novel clutched to her ample bosom.
Ada sighed. The whole thing was tiresome, really. She wanted her life back. Wanted quiet and tranquility and safety. Safety wasn’t such an outrageous wish, was it?
She wasn’t like Edison or his league. They thrived on danger, on hidden threats and physical challenges. She wanted to spend an afternoon in her laboratory, puzzling over chemicals.
Each experiment held surprises, but whatever caught her off-guard was the result of some logical process, a process she could discover and repeat with unerring success.
Ada moved to the last of the bookshelves that abutted the clothier’s store to her right. A travel ensemble, dove gray with clean, spare lines and a white blouse, saved from severity by a charming edging of lace at the collar, caught her eye.
But not her heart.
She had no yearning to travel. She’d have no use for the sturdy leather gladstone slung across the mannequin’s torso. The clever buckled passport pocket would only go empty.
The truth was, she had no desire for excitement in her life.
All the more reason to finish this business with her device, hand it over to the men charged with utilizing it, and bid Edison Sweet and his family goodbye.
If he didn’t end up dead before then.
Where the devil was he, anyway?
In direct defiance of his instructions, she took a good, long look around the area. Men rushed to catch a horse-drawn trolley. Tourists threw handfuls of breadcrumbs to the plump pigeons waddling about beneath Nelson’s column.
The sun shone down on the square, making the water sparkle and the grimy, soot-stained facades of the buildings shine a little brighter than they might have.
Her mood, on the other hand, was darkening by the second.
If the blasted man had gotten himself killed, she’d—</p>
“I believe I found something of yours.” Edison’s hearty voice boomed.
She whirled around to see him striding toward her, dragging a figure along by his collar as if he were a freshly caught fish.
Ada sagged back against the brickwork. “Archie?”
Edison shoved him forward, planting himself at his back. “Not who I was expecting.”
Archie sneered at her. “You’re going to lose it. Someone stronger and smarter than you is going to get that battery.” His upper lip curled in the most unattractive manner. “Might as well be me.”
The fury in his words cut her. He’d never cared for her. Nor she for him, but to see such outright hatred…
She shifted her gaze to Edison’s face, but had to turn away from the soft pity in his eyes. For the second time, she thought she might dissolve into tears.