“WHAT’S WRONG?” Violet asked. Sitting on the floor, the viscount looked as pale as her father’s prized lilies. “Ford?”
“Nothing.” He glanced around uneasily, as though he expected someone to pop up and steal the book out of his white-knuckled hands.
She couldn’t help but notice those hands were shaking. The book was small and looked old. No, make that ancient, she decided after she’d reached for her spectacles and slipped them back on. It was handwritten, and the pages sounded brittle, crackling when he gingerly turned them.
“Another foreign title, is it?” Even with the eyeglasses, she couldn’t read a word. “Do you expect Rose would like it?”
“No.” Still trembling, he stood abruptly. “Not this one.”
“Can you read it? Is it French or Dutch?”
“It’s no language I’ve ever seen. Will you get those?” he added distractedly, gesturing to the books on the floor.
As she knelt to collect the volumes they’d chosen, he hurried away to talk to the proprietor.
“Yes, only a shilling,” Mr. Young was saying when she joined them a minute later. Gazing down at the book, he lazily flipped a few pages. “It’s not English or Latin, though, and difficult to decipher, handwritten as it is. Can you even read it?”
“Well, no.” Ford raked his fingers through his hair—not the smooth, thoughtful gesture Violet had become used to seeing, or even the quicker one that indicated frustration. This motion was jerky and convulsive instead.
What was wrong with him?
“I have a friend, an expert in languages,” he said. “I thought he might enjoy the challenge.” He held out his hand, and she could almost hear him willing the shopkeeper to give him back the book.
The man handed it over, gesturing dismissively. “A shilling will do, then. Truth be told, I feel guilty taking money for the thing at all.”
“Appreciate it.” Ford turned to Violet, taking the books from her arms. “Add these to the total, please.” He passed them over to Mr. Young and started digging out his pouch.
“I brought money,” she protested. “I cannot accept a gift from you. It wouldn’t look right.”
“Rubbish. You’ve already accepted the spectacles, haven’t you?”
Her hands went to her face protectively. “These were different. You made them.”
“They’re just books, Violet.”
Mr. Young looked at each book, scribbling their prices on a scrap of paper, preparatory to adding them up. He paused when he came to Violet’s first choice. “Are you certain you want this, my lady?”
“Aristotle’s Master-piece? Yes. Unless…is it very expensive?”
Frowning, he blinked his pale blue eyes. “No, not particularly.”
“We’ll take it.” Ford selected a few coins and pressed them into the bookseller’s hand. “Jewel? Rowan? Are you done with your game?” He looked to be in a terrible rush.
“One more minute, Uncle Ford.”
He shifted from foot to foot while they finished playing, then took Jewel by the hand to pull her from her seat. With a distracted “Thank you” called over his shoulder to Mr. Young, he waved Violet and Rowan through the door and followed them out with his niece.
“Is something amiss, Uncle Ford?” the little girl asked.
“No. No, not at all. I’m hoping something is very right.” He hastened them down the street, his gaze focused straight ahead to where the barge sat waiting. “Hurry. Quickly.”
In her fashionable high heels, Violet had a hard time keeping up, and she completely forgot to worry about who might see her wearing the spectacles. In no time at all, he was ushering them aboard.
“Straight home, Harry.” Ford hesitated, though for barely an instant. “No, stop at the first decent inn—but not until we’ve cleared the town.”
The children joined Harry at the helm while Ford hurried Violet into the cabin, apparently forgetting it was unsuitable. He pulled the door shut behind them. When the barge began moving, he let out a long, audible breath and dropped heavily onto the bed.
Since there wasn’t any other furniture, Violet seated herself primly at the foot of the bed. “What’s going on?” she asked, concerned by this odd behavior.
“I just…I suppose I feared Mr. Young would come running out and take the book back.” It was still clenched in his fingers. “It’s foolish, I know,” he said, offering her a sheepish smile.
“Is it that important, then?”
“If it turns out to be what I’m hoping it is, yes, it’s important.” He relaxed his grip and, opening the book, turned a page and then another. If she could judge from his smile, the crackle of old paper sounded like music to his ears. “Very important.”
“I imagine your friend will be pleased.”
In the midst of turning another page, he looked up. “My friend?”
“Your friend who is good with languages.”
“Oh.” She’d never seen a gentleman blush before. “That wasn’t the whole truth, I’m afraid. I just didn’t know quite what to say. If the bookseller realized what this was…well, what it might be…but maybe I shouldn’t…” He met her gaze. “What am I saying? Of course I can trust you.” He sucked in a breath and blew it out. “This book could be extremely valuable, Violet.”
Just the way he’d said her name, earnestly, like he cared, made her warm to her toes.
Rowan opened the door and poked his head in. His gaze sought out the book. “That looks very old,” he said soberly. “Is it the emerald secrets book?”
“It might be,” Ford said. “Everyone thought it was gone. I’m not certain I quite believed it had ever really existed.” Light streamed through the cabin’s two windows, illuminating the old pages, but they didn’t glow nearly as brightly as his eyes. “The book was supposed to have been small and bound in brown leather, and of course it would have been handwritten, as Gutenberg’s printing press hadn’t yet been invented. And here, look.” He flipped to the first page. “The alchemical symbol for gold. And five words in the title. But I cannot be sure. I wish I could read the thing.”
If Violet had never seen a gentleman blush before, she’d never seen one so excited, either. About anything. “The emerald secrets book?” she asked. “What’s that?”
Her brother smiled importantly. “It tells the lost secret of the Philosopher’s Rock. I’m going to tell Jewel.” He slammed the door, and she heard his footsteps pound across the wooden deck.
“The Philosopher’s Stone,” Ford corrected the empty space where Rowan had stood.
Violet gasped. “The formula to turn metals into gold?”
“The very same. Secrets of the Emerald Tablet has been missing for three hundred years, and if this is it…”
“Do you think it really is?”
“I don’t know. It could be. Everyone assumed it had been destroyed.” He turned a few pages and stared down at the ancient text. “I’m crossing my fingers—and I’m probably the least superstitious individual you’ll ever meet.”
Suspecting he was right, she smiled at that. “What is the Emerald Tablet?”
He shut the book. “It’s a long story.”
“It’s a long way down the river,” she pointed out.
“Very well, then,” he said, looking pleased. He stood up and began pacing in the skinny, cramped space around the bed, his hands clasped behind his back. “It all started back in Egypt, some twenty-five hundred years before Jesus Christ. Where the Divine Art first had its birth.”
“The Divine Art?”
“Alchemy. An Egyptian priest named Hermes Trismegistus was known to have great intellectual powers. The Art was kept secret and exclusive to the priesthood, but more than two thousand years later, when the tomb of Hermes was discovered by Alexander the Great in a cave near Hebron, they found a tablet of emerald stone. On it was inscribed, in Phoenician characters, the wisdom of the Great Master concerning the art of making gold.”
He paused, looking at her where she still sat perched at the foot of the bed. “You look uncomfortable there,” he said, reaching to scoop up one of the pillows. “Lean back against the wall.” He tossed it to her.
He’d told her it was a long story, so she scooted over to the wall and tucked the pillow behind her back, her legs stretched out on the bed. Noticing their outlines were visible beneath the drape of her peach gown, she fluffed her skirts a little. “Where is the Emerald Tablet now?”
He resumed pacing. ”We don’t know. But years later, in the thirteenth century, a man named Raymond Lully was born to a noble family in Majorca. He took up the study of alchemy and wandered the Continent to learn more of the science. Many stories have been told of Lully’s abilities to make gold, which he claimed to have learned from studying the Emerald Tablet.”
“What sorts of stories?”
His mouth curved in a faint smile. “You’re really listening, aren’t you?”
She cocked her head at him, baffled. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“No reason.” Still smiling, he turned the book over in his hands, then opened it again absently. “It’s said that the Abbot of Westminster found Lully in Italy and persuaded him to come to London, where he worked in Westminster Abbey. A long time afterwards, a quantity of gold dust was discovered in the cell where he’d lived. Another story has it that Lully was assigned lodgings in the Tower of London. People claimed to see golden pieces he’d made, and they called them nobles of Raymond, or Rose nobles. It was during this period that he is said to have written Secrets of the Emerald Tablet, I believe around the year 1275.”
“Almost four hundred years ago.” Looking at the pages Ford was carefully turning, she could believe the book was that old. “What happened then?”
“Lully eventually left England to resume his travels, but it was thought he left the book behind. It was supposed to have been written in language that’s difficult to read.”
She held out a hand, and wordlessly, he passed her the open book. She removed her spectacles and peered at the spiky writing. She couldn’t read a word. Some of it didn’t even look like words, but more like symbols.
“Do you suppose it’s Phoenician, like the Tablet?” she asked.
“I have no idea. Legend has it that the book changed hands a few times and then disappeared in the fourteenth century, never to be seen again.”
“Until now.”
“Maybe.” His eyes appeared wistful. “It looks old enough, doesn’t it?”
“It would be priceless, wouldn’t it?” Imagine being able to produce gold. Caught up in his excitement, she handed back the book. “You could sell that for a fortune. An unbelievable fortune.”
“I’d never sell it.” He clutched the book to his chest. “If it’s the missing volume, I’ll never, ever sell it. Even should it turn out not to divulge a working formula.”
“You’d feel the same even if it couldn’t help you make gold?” Surprised, and yet somehow not, she slipped her spectacles back on to study his face. “I wouldn’t have taken you for a romantic,” she said softly.
“Who, me?” he murmured, holding her gaze for a long moment, a hint of a smile tugging at his lips.
Silently, he sat himself on the bed, stretched out his legs, and scooted over until he was right beside Violet, pressed against her from shoulder to hip.
Speechless, she looked down. Unwilling to meet his eyes, her own wandered the length of his legs. They looked lean and athletic, his ankles crossed in a relaxed manner.
With every nerve in her body humming, she wasn’t relaxed at all.
“Raymond Lully is the stuff of legends,” he continued calmly, as if oblivious to their improper proximity. “Any book he’d written would hold an immeasurable amount of historic and sentimental value. It would be an honor to own it, no matter what it said.”
When he fell silent again, she forced her gaze to his face, and the expression there told her he wasn’t oblivious at all.
He knew exactly how uncomfortable he was making her.
This was ridiculous.
And now that she’d met his eyes, she couldn’t seem to stop staring at them. She felt trapped in their infinite blue depths.
Faith, she was thinking like Rose. She’d never taken herself for a romantic—she was far too sensible!
But currently behaving very insensibly, indeed. The barge slowed and bumped against a dock, but it didn't jar her from the spell Ford seemed to have woven around her.
She licked her lips.
“And what of you?” he asked, his voice soft but his eyes dancing. “Are you a romantic?” Without waiting for an answer, he leaned forward, brushing a hand over her cheek, and—
Harry pulled open the door.
“Will this do, my lord?” He gestured at the scenery behind him, which included a respectable old riverside inn that boasted tables along the bank of the Thames.
To Harry’s credit, he didn’t blink when he saw them spring apart. And, thank the heavens above, Ford managed to lever himself into a standing position before the children arrived in the doorway.
“It will do very well,” he said. “Thank you.”