The Designs of Lord Randolph Cavanaugh by Stephanie Laurens

Author:Stephanie Laurens
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: 0
Published: 2018-02-21T15:49:34+00:00

CHAPTER 10

At three o’clock the following afternoon, Felicia was seated at the far end of the south lawn in one of the cane armchairs from the terrace; her back was to the house, and her parasol was raised, artfully shading her face.

Before her, Clive Mayhew sat behind his easel, his entire focus on the sketch he was creating with swift, sure strokes.

Felicia wasn’t even sure he saw her as an animate entity.

It had taken a good few minutes for him to direct her into the correct pose. She’d been sitting with her shoes flat on the grass, her head raised a fraction and tilted to her left, with the parasol riding over her left shoulder for the last thirty minutes.

About them, the summer afternoon stretched, somnolent and lazy. The air was weighted with the smell of freshly cut hay, the sweet scent wafting under the hand of an oh-so-gentle breeze. Insects—bees in the kitchen garden, perhaps—droned in the distance, while nearer to hand, the occasional bird chirped in the thick undergrowth beneath the wood’s trees.

Felicia stifled a sigh. She was already well and truly bored. Before she’d struck her pose, she’d glimpsed Rand in the dappled shadows of the wood—not behind Mayhew but to her left. The last glimpse she’d had of him, he’d been leaning with one shoulder propped against a bole, arms crossed, his gaze undeviatingly fixed on her and Mayhew.

For his part, Mayhew had been so focused on the view he’d intended to sketch, he’d spared not a glance for the woods; she would wager her mother’s pearls he was utterly oblivious to their watcher beneath the trees.

Even if Mayhew did look searchingly around, she doubted he would spot Rand; that helpful bole would largely screen him from Mayhew’s sight.

Without shifting position, she studied Mayhew. He was seated on his folding stool, his attention wholly on his sketch. He was using several pencils, one, then another, gripping those not in use in his left hand while his right hand moved swiftly across the paper. He didn’t seem to even look to decide which pencil was which; his fingers seemed to know them by feel.

Again, the proof that Mayhew truly was an artist was displayed for anyone to see.

Felicia inwardly sighed and started composing a suitable incidental comment with which to allude to inventions and inventors.

She’d almost crafted a workable sentence when a massive bang! exploded from the house—from the workshop.

She managed not to react—to turn and stare—but Mayhew had blinked and was now staring at the house.

“It’s just another pipe.” It wasn’t—this time it was something even more troublesome than a valve. Mayhew glanced at her, and she waved dismissively. “The staff will take care of it.”

Mayhew hesitated, then settled to his sketching again, although Felicia noted he glanced toward the house—toward its rear—more frequently than before.

She could only pray that the workshop door hadn’t blown open and that clouds of steam weren’t gushing forth.

That morning, she’d worked with William John to solve what they had hoped

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