Who Wants to Marry a Duke - Sabrina Jeffries Page 0,43
wanted him to behave. But telling him that was obviously unwise. He’d made it clear in London that he would never offer for her, and she refused to let him tarnish her reputation for the sake of a little fun.
Even if a little fun did sound delicious after her long day in the laboratory.
As he ushered her inside, fortunately leaving the door open, she said, “Oh, I didn’t even know this room was here! How beautiful it is.” Majestic delft tiles surrounded the fireplace, and everything else seemed designed to complement it, from the simple sofa of cobalt-blue brocade to the elegant writing table and the curtains of a blue-and-white toile fabric.
He lit candles to give them a bit more light. Then taking a seat on one end of the sofa, he gestured for her to sit at the other end.
But she was too excited to do so. After setting her journals and notebooks on the writing table next to a tray with two glasses and a crystal decanter of what looked like brandy, she began to pace before the fireplace.
He chuckled. “What’s got you so energetic at this late hour? Don’t tell me you’ve already found arsenic in what I brought you earlier.”
“No, not yet. The important thing is what I didn’t find arsenic in.”
A frown creased his brow. “I don’t understand.”
“You know that Grey’s father was embalmed, right? Well, I got lucky and was able to extract embalming fluid from the heart. And it contained no arsenic.”
“So he wasn’t poisoned.”
“I don’t know that yet.” She stopped in front of Thorn. “You see, some embalmers use a fluid that has arsenous acid as an ingredient. But the embalmer of Grey’s father didn’t, thank goodness.”
He still looked perplexed.
“Arsenous acid is . . .” She paused, trying to think in a layman’s terms. “It’s like a variant of arsenic—if it’s in the embalming fluid, it would turn up as arsenic in any test. A good chemist would know that, too, so he—or she—might try to claim in a court trial that the arsenic came from the embalming fluid, not from poison. But now we can test for arsenic in the other organs, and if we find any, then there’s no doubt it came from poison.”
“Ah, I see.” He leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees. “You’re already thinking ahead to proving your results.”
“I’m already thinking ahead to a trial, yes.” She began pacing again. “And honestly, given the description of his father’s death that Grey got from his mother, his relations, and their old servants, it sounds like a case of acute arsenic poisoning. So the arsenic trioxide wouldn’t even have had time to affect the hair and nails. The previous duke died within a day of contracting his ague. If there’s arsenic, the stomach might still contain traces of it. The intestines almost certainly will.”
“I now know more about the anatomy of Grey’s father than I ever wanted to know,” he said dryly.
“And I don’t know enough.” She sat down on the sofa. “I can’t believe you’re not excited about this.”
“I can’t believe you are.” He shifted to face her, bringing one leg up so he could rest his knee on the sofa. “I mean, I recognize the implications your discovery has for doing the arsenic testing, but it . . . doesn’t thrill me as it seems to do you.”
“That’s because you’re not a chemist.”
“Thank God.” He stared at her. “I’d make a very bad chemist.”
“But you make an excellent duke, I’m sure.”
“I don’t know about that.” He sucked in a heavy breath. That reminded her . . . “I’m sorry, but I forgot you said you had to talk to me about something. What was it?”
His lips tightened into a thin line. “I wanted to ask you about our first meeting.”
She stifled a sigh. It was long past time they discussed it. She wished he hadn’t waited until when she was exhausted, but she had been avoiding him, and that wasn’t his fault. Perhaps it was better to deal with it and be done.
“As a matter of fact,” she said, “I’ve been wanting to ask you about that, too.” Her heart began pounding. “But you go first. I’ve already regaled you for too long with the intricacies of my favorite subject.”
“Very well.” He rose and went over to the writing table. After refilling the glass he’d obviously been drinking from before, he took the other glass on the tray and waved it at her. “Would you