Today's Reading
"You are in a terrible mood. What ails you, Fenley?" Grantham asked, stretching out his legs and placing his hands behind his head, the picture of aristocratic indolence.
Sam knew well that Grantham was far from indolent, but the reclined pose annoyed him, nonetheless.
Everything annoyed him these days.
"Nothing ails me, my lord."
Sam had meant the honorific as a tease, but the words came out hard and clipped. One long earlish eyebrow lifted on Grantham's face at the tone.
"If I were to guess, I'd say you were in want of one of life's great necessities," Grantham opined.
Jealousy sprang to life deep in Sam's belly, kindled with myriad thwarted ambitions; obstacles a man without title nor a single drop of blue blood in his veins faced every day in this country.
Sam growled. "Simply because women used to fawn over you for the chance at being a countess—"
The pink spread from Grantham's ears to his cheeks as he dropped his arms and sat straight up in his chair. "I'm not talking about sex, Fenley."
What else might constitute one of life's necessities if not sex?
Food?
Wealth?
"I'm not hungry," Sam said. "I've enough money to buy the crown right off Queen Victoria's head, I own two broadsheets now, investments in property, plus half the family business. I'm seldom bored thanks to my four sisters and the never-ending catastrophes those scientists over at Athena's Retreat drag us into. There's not a 'single' thing missing from my life."
With a patronizing sigh, Grantham ran his fingers through his hair, eyes rolling up to the heavens as though he communicated with God on a peer-to-peer level.
"I'm talking about love, Fenley."
What?
Sam nearly fell back out of his chair again.
"What? You're talking about...You're talking about sex, you mean," Sam said.
Grantham shook his head slowly, an obnoxious half smile pasted across his face.
"I'm talking about marriage."
Oh, for feck's sake. Sam jumped up from his chair and paced around the desk separating him and Grantham, then to the window overlooking a small courtyard shared by the building next door.
Love.
What nonsense was this?
"You've inhaled too many fumes over at Athena's Retreat," Sam said.
Yes.
Fumes.
That must be the reason those beautiful geniuses at the Retreat fell for Grantham's clumsy charms.
Athena's Retreat, a secret haven for women scientists, was the creation of three brilliant women. One of them was his older sister, Letty, a mathematician who'd also married a man with a title. She'd collaborated with her friend Violet Kneland, as well as a woman named Lady Phoebe Hunt.
While Sam knew Violet well enough to use first names, he'd met Lady Phoebe only a handful of times, and she'd provoked an intriguing mix of lust and intimidation. She was as much a genius as Letty and the daughter of a marquess, no less. She and Grantham were almost engaged before Margaret Gault returned to England.
Only a massive inhalation of fumes could delude a group of women with such impressive brains into finding Grantham appealing.
...
