Free A Highland Duchess by Karen Ranney Page B

certain I know what science is,” she said. Why was she always so lamentably honest with him?
    “I shall have to show you one day,” he said. “Perhaps after all of this, we’ll have the opportunity.”
    “A friendship between an abductor and his prisoner.”
    “Perhaps,” he said, smiling.
    “Brigand and scientist. What else do you do?”
    “A great many things,” he said.
    “Do I have your word that I will be safe here, Ian?” she suddenly asked. She hadn’t meant to ask the question but she was still conscious of the fear she’d felt earlier.
    Was she always going to be just a little afraid?
    He frowned at her, then just as suddenly his frown eased and a look came over his face that she couldn’t decipher.
    “I give you my solemn word, Emma, that you are safe here.”
    He didn’t speak or ask the reason for her question. She was more than a little embarrassed for having spied on him, as well as insisting upon his reassurance now. A man’s word was worthless if he had no honor. People in Anthony’s circle were cleaved in two: a private persona and a public one. No one was truly honorable in either guise.
    She shouldn’t have considered this man who’d invaded her home, who’d abducted her, an honorable man. Yet she believed him, and strangely, trusted in his word.
    “Thank you for the books,” she said.
    “You’re welcome. I’m glad my sister is such a prodigious reader.”
    The silence was oddly intimate, as if each held back thoughts they shouldn’t say.
    “I haven’t heard from your uncle, yet,” he said. “But I’ll send a man to your house tomorrow.”
    She nodded. Uncomfortable with the silence, she spoke again. “Did you give a speech tonight?”
    “I did,” he said, smiling. “Perhaps that’s why parts of the dinner were so boring.”
    “I should like to hear it,” she said.
    “You wouldn’t.”
    “I very much would,” she said. The startled look on his face, coupled with his obvious reluctance, encouraged her to insist. “Truly, I would.”
    “The sun’s light reveals its track when passing through a dark room by the dust floating in the air. The same particles are invisible by candlelight,” he said.
    She glanced at him in confusion, then understood. He was reciting his speech to her.
    “In my research on decomposition by bacteria, I was troubled by the appearance of floating matter, and compelled to remove these atoms and dust. I wanted my experiment to have no taint of these diffuse particles.”
    Two maids walked along the corridor, and he leaned closer, his voice dropping to a whisper. His mouth was only an inch or so from her ear. She could feel his breath on her skin.
    She shivered.
    “I therefore constructed a box to track these atoms before the air which contained them reached my experiment.” His voice was low, the words less important than his delivery of them. He could have recited the Book of Common Prayer and made it sound like a decadent and forbidden volume.
    “The box was lined with a vitreous solution.”
    She heard the sound of laughter, then he moved still closer and she couldn’t pay attention to anything but him.
    “As I had postulated, within a day the air coming into my experiment was devoid of these particles.”
    “It sounds like an enormously interesting speech,” she said when he’d finished. In truth, she’d barely heard a word of it and understood even less.
    The air around them was still, the courtyard silent. Not a leaf stirred. Not a bird sang. The servants were gone, all but two of the lamps extinguished. The two of them stood alone in the garden.
    “I should leave,” she said. Why was it suddenly so difficult to breathe?
    She took a cautionary step to the side, then another, but he only turned to face her, the faint light illuminating the side of his face, the curve of his smile.
    “Have I given you any reason to fear me?” he asked.
    “Besides entering my sitting room? Other than crawling across my roof?”
    He