Page 2 of The English Duke
The room was filled with all those things Marie loved, but evidently not enough to remain at Griffin House. Needlepoint sat in a frame, patiently waiting to be finished. Needlepoint pillows were arranged on the sofa. Footrests upholstered in needlepoint sat at their feet while needlepoint pictures of flowers framed in gold hung on one wall. Even the draperies had needlepoint tiebacks.
She couldn’t help but wonder if Marie truly had an affinity for needlepoint or if it was only an outlet for other feelings.
The Rose Parlor had been decorated by her stepmother. The sofa and love seat, as well as the curtains that framed the view of the back lawn and the lake were pink. The pillows that weren’t covered in needlepoint were pink as well. The round carpet beneath her feet consisted of overblown lush roses—in pink, of course—with a contrasting green border.
Josephine loved the room. Martha felt slightly bilious in it. Gran didn’t seem to mind, being as involved in her crocheting as Marie had been in her needlepoint.
As for herself, when she wasn’t in her own room, Martha was in her father’s cottage. Although not quite a laboratory, it truly wasn’t an office, either. Instead, it was a combination of the two with tall skinny windows looking out over the lake.
She was his assistant and one of her tasks was to record his thoughts and experiments for the ages as well as to serve as his sounding board.
He’d been a good man, a truly inventive one. If he was more involved in his pursuits and less his family, perhaps that was to be expected.
No one, least of all her, had been that surprised when Marie had hied off to France six months after his death. According to the letter she had written Josephine, she was madly in love with a French count.
Of course I will send for you, my love,she’d written.As soon as Pierre and I are settled at his estate. You will love the château. It’s so much more to my taste than Griffin House ever was.
Marie was French, a fact that Josephine seemed to recite more and more often of late. As if being half-French was something preferable to being completely English.
“Well?” Josephine asked. “What are you going to do?”
Martha looked out at the lake, placid in the July morning, remembering her father’s words. “Wherever there’s a mystery, you can’t help but feel excitement. Always seek to find a mystery. The sheer act of solving it will keep you happy.”
The mystery that had occupied her mind ever since his death was finding how that final experiment had been successful. He’d been so happy when he’d come in from the storm. He’d been drenched but ecstatic, telling her that his vessel had leveled off, heading directly for the target.
But he hadn’t told her how.
In this instance there were no notes. No thoughts or idle speculation. Nothing to give her any clue.
She was determined that his life’s work would be finished, even if she had to turn over all his notes and work to the duke.
“We have to go,” Josephine said, interrupting her thoughts. “It’s what Father would have wanted. Besides, it’s the Duke of Roth! Can you imagine, Martha? We could see Sedgebrook!”
She stared down at the letter again.
Jordan Hamilton, the Duke of Roth, had a great deal to answer for, not the least of which was putting their household into disarray. His words were curt, almost to the point of rudeness, and made her even more determined to fulfill her father’s wishes. Like it or not, Matthew York had wanted the Duke of Roth to have his notes and Bessie, his latest invention.
For years she’d been her father’s assistant. She was the only one who knew what he wanted, who could pull the exact notes he needed from the volume of his work. She’d been the only one to help him with his experiments. No one else could take apart the reciprocating engine he’d devised, a clever thing run by compressed air, or the hydrostatic valve, and the most important piece of all—the pendulum balance that kept the ship at a certain depth.
She’d spent months categorizing all the parts, carefully labeling the inventions. With the help of the footmen, she’d packed everything away in wooden crates, ready for the duke to come and get them. Several of her father’s devices had shown promise, like the light that followed the path of water and the photographs capable of absorbing the colors of its subject.
But it was the York Torpedo Ship that had fascinated her father and the once naval officer Jordan Hamilton.
“What are you going to do, Martha?” Gran asked.
Martha glanced at Josephine, who was practically dancing in place in front of her then over at her grandmother.
“I see nothing else to do, Gran, but to take Father’s work to him.”
“You can’t mean to do it alone, Martha,” Josephine said. “You can’t do such a shocking thing.”
She looked up at Josephine. “No less shocking than all of us descending on Sedgebrook.”
“Nevertheless,” Gran said, packing up her crochet work in the special bag designed for it, “that’s exactly what we shall do. I’ll not have you go alone.”
She frowned down at the letter again. The penmanship was perfect. Yet the duke had not explained why he’d ignored all of her letters. Evidently he hadn’t even opened them. Otherwise, he would have known that her father asked for him, even on his deathbed.
She didn’t want to visit the Duke of Roth. She couldn’t forget all those occasions when her father had weakly asked, “Has he answered yet? Is he coming?”
