LAKEFIELD HOUSE was quiet. Too quiet.
Hilda and Harry knew better than to disturb Ford when he was working, but Jewel had never quite mastered that bit of etiquette. Now Ford found his gaze straying toward the door, waiting for his niece to burst through, a grin on her heart-shaped face and a ribbon clenched in her diminutive fist.
Or a dead insect. One never quite knew what to expect from Lady Jewel.
But the one thing he hadn’t expected was to feel this sudden loneliness. Emptiness. For pity’s sake, he missed her.
Ford Chase missed a child.
Whoever would have thought? Wasn’t a family of his own the last item on his list of priorities? Though he’d always known he must have children eventually—Lakefield would need an heir, after all—he’d never been able to envision them in his life. Having a family had seemed so dreadfully adult.
But now, instead of finishing his watch, he found himself daydreaming. A girl and a boy, like Jewel and Rowan. And a mother for them, of course.
Violet would be perfect.
Gears slipped from his fingers as that thought took root in his brain. He dropped to a crouch to reach one that rolled beneath his workbench, then bumped his head as he came back up.
Rubbing where it hurt, he sat on the floor to analyze when and how he had fallen in love with Violet Ashcroft.
He’d always thought he wanted someone like Tabitha. Effervescent, confident, a girl whose looks stopped men in the street. Violet was none of those things. But she listened to his ideas and challenged him with her own.
He’d never imagined a girl like Violet existed.
Now that he knew she did, perhaps it was logical for an academic such as Ford to find himself drawn to someone with Violet’s unusual qualities.
But it would be downright illogical for him to pursue the matter. He could hardly expect Violet to marry him when his estate and finances were such a disaster. The meeting with his solicitor had not gone well. There were bills to be paid and no money with which to pay them.
The man had presented two options. One, turn Lakefield into a working estate and see that it prospered. Two, sell the blasted place. Only a small portion of the land was entailed. Selling the rest—including the house—would raise enough money to support Ford for years to come, leaving him free to pursue his own work.
As a third son, Ford should never have had a title, and while he enjoyed that part of it well enough, he wasn’t cut out to be a landowner. True, he’d assisted his brother Jason with Cainewood’s never-ending responsibilities—he knew the ins and outs of running an estate. But he had no love for that sort of life.
Working the land, dealing with tenants, collecting rents. It was all so tedious and trivial. At the end of a typical nobleman’s life, one’s legacy was naught but more of the same passed down to an heir. Nothing new to contribute to knowledge and mankind.
He’d always pictured his life in London, with his research and the Royal Society.
But now his heart was here.
Restless, he rose to his feet and tossed the gear into the mess on the table. What did it matter where his heart was? Violet’s parents might appear to like him personally, but it would be highly irrational of them to allow their daughter to marry a penniless viscount. Under normal circumstances, the fact that Violet came with a sizable inheritance as well as a dowry might mitigate the situation, but nothing about Violet was normal. Knowing her feelings about husbands and inheritances, he was sure he’d have a beast of a time convincing her he wasn’t after her fortune.
And knowing the reality of his finances, he’d have an equally difficult time sticking to his word.
He closed his eyes and rubbed them. It was hopeless. He might as well put her out of his mind. And he knew just how to go about that, too.
For once, his inability to concentrate on more than one thing at a time would prove an asset.
After quickly separating the jumble of gears on his work table, he lifted the gold watch to dangle by its chain. He wanted to invent a personal timepiece with two hands. That was why he had come to Lakefield in the first place. Without Jewel to distract him, he ought to be able to achieve his aim at last.
It was a good thing he’d taken time to analyze the situation, because these lofty romantic sentiments had nothing to do with his real life. Nothing to do with his aspirations.
He took a deep breath, raked a hand through his hair, and got to work.