A Passion for Pleasure(63)
“And the gears inside the box rotate the disks,” Granville said.
Both men peered at the diagrams as if they were maps to a hidden treasure.
Clara smiled slightly at the sight of them, furrows of concentration lining their foreheads. Though Darius needed the funds of a patron before constructing the machine and presenting it to the Home Office committee, he had enlisted Uncle Granville’s help in translating the diagrams. The men had spent all their time studying the plans in the two days since Clara and Sebastian’s wedding.
“The alphabet code is very precise,” Granville explained. “And it requires a different key word for each correspondent. Wait a moment. Let me get the notes I made about Monsieur Dupree’s calculations and we can see if they work.”
He left to return to his workshop. In the ensuing silence, Clara remembered Sebastian’s words, his declaration of love that wound through her like bright ribbons. Oh, how desperately she wanted to return the avowal, to admit to all the feelings that had been locked inside her for so many years—her youthful adoration now flourishing into a brilliant, richly complex love that both thrilled and frightened her. A love she could not yet acknowledge.
A shuddering breath escaped her. She looked at Darius, who was watching her across the misty sunlight. A hint of sympathy eased the impassivity of his features.
Clara swallowed and placed her sewing on a nearby table.
“Did Sebastian tell you about my son?” she asked.
Darius nodded. “He will help you in whatever way he can.”
“He already has.” A touch of nervousness wound through her. “Were you terribly shocked when he told you of our agreement?”
“No, because I know my brothers.” Darius rubbed a hand across his hair and studied the notebook in front of him. Behind his glasses, his eyes took on a distant cast. “Sebastian is not like Alexander or Nicholas. Or me, for that matter. Alexander forces things to fit the way he wants them to. Nicholas breaks them, if need be.”
“And you?” Clara asked.
Darius shrugged and leaned forward to make a notation on a page. “Sebastian is more…surreptitious,” he continued. “He used to merely charm people into doing what he wanted, but now it seems he needs to find a different approach. And he will find it, Clara, make no mistake. Loyalty is his greatest strength.”
A smile tugged at her mouth. “And his greatest weakness?”
“The same.”
“Why?”
He put the pencil down, a frown etched on his brow. “Because he sometimes finds it necessary to lie in order to protect those he loves.”
Clara knew he spoke of the way Sebastian had kept secret the infirmity of his hand, which Darius must have sensed even if he didn’t know the full truth. Yet Sebastian had told her about it shortly after her proposal, as if he knew the secret would be safe with her.
“Here it is.” Granville returned, his head bent as he leafed through a tattered notebook. “I expect one of these codes will work.”
He and Darius began conferring over the specifications again. Clara pushed up from her chair and went to the foyer, where Mrs. Fox sat penning numbers into her account books.
“Any word from Mr. Hall?” Clara asked.
“No, Mrs. Hall.” Mrs. Fox peered at her from above the half-moons of her reading glasses. “You said you were expecting him before supper, and it’s not yet tea.”
“Yes, I know.” Clara twisted her hands into her apron. Sebastian had gone to a meeting with his brother’s solicitor, Mr. Findlay, in order to finish the contract to convey Wakefield House to Lord Fairfax. As soon as the terms were established, and both Clara and Granville, as trustee, signed the papers, they could approach Fairfax with the proposal. Despite Clara’s wish to accompany Sebastian, he wanted to ensure the impermeability of the terms first before she and Granville reviewed the contract.
“You’ll let me know if he returns or sends a message?” she asked Mrs. Fox.
“Of course.” The other woman returned to her ledger.
Clara went into the drawing room and tried to busy herself by straightening the displays and testing a few of the automata. She twisted the key of a mechanical toy and watched a little bear beating on a drum. When it wound down, she turned it again.
Restlessness seethed in her, born of both Sebastian’s admission and the physical pleasure she had experienced at her husband’s touch. She could not reconcile the two most essential needs she had ever known—her desire for Sebastian and her desperation to have her son back. In allowing herself to surrender to the former, she feared she weakened the force of the latter.