Page 8 of The Scholar’s Spy

He hurried to keep up with her as they maneuvered through the village, bypassing the occasional inhabitant of Lyme Regis who would smile and nod in greeting at Miss Fossey as they walked by.

“Here we are.” She stopped in front of a grand looking building, beautifully cleaned and clearly painted anew in the last year, whose gleaming windows gave away little that was on the inside. “If you care to eat, there is a tavern—” She gestured further down the street. “—it does a pleasing fish or game pies. And serves ale and cider, which is famous in these parts. A lot of local men drink flip though.” She added the latter and a drink, which he had never heard of. With this, she seemed prepared to leave.

“Wait.” He caught Miss Fossey by the elbow, having lowered his valise to the ground. She stopped in her tracks, and looked up into his face expectantly.

“Where do we commence our search tomorrow?”

“I will meet you in front of the cobb steps tomorrow morning.”

“At nine say?”

“I was going to suggest five sharp, sir.”

“Very well, eight,” Robert said. As he watched Miss Fossey depart in reluctant agreement, he could not help but feel invigorated in a way he could not recall feeling in any of his other investigations.

Chapter Three

Abigail slipped back into her own house. With a sigh that was out of character for her, she leaned back against the door and looked up to the ceiling. She dwelt on the last hour. It was cool and calming inside, the homey touches of previous years had been stripped away and sold, leaving the hallway a placid grey color with all of its decorations gone. It was so different from the heavy, golden warmth she’d remembered from her girlhood.

Why had she been so willing to help a stranger? Normally men held little interest for her, but this man had been different—he had been special.

Was it because he said he was interested in the fossils?

Abigail told herself this was the case, but she did wonder even if he had not expressed any curiosity about such things, would she still have been curious about him? It was strange of her to admit this, but yes. Yes, she might have been.

Awareness bloomed through her, a consciousness of her own body in his presence. This never happened to her. Yet with Mr. O’Sullivan, she had rather enjoyed the newfound sensation.

It had been thanks to the ridiculous conversation Judith had brought up. Marriage, as something the pair of them should be pursuing. Suddenly, intimacy did not seem as objectionable as she had once assumed it would be.

“Maa-meow.” There came a funny little bleating noise from the end of the hallway. Up from the kitchen steps emerged the Fossey’s peat-colored cat Milton, named in honor of the great writer, although Milton had arrived years ago, and no one really knew where he came from. Presumably Milton had his own name, but whatever it might be, he had never given any inclination of what it might have been.

Meandering forward, Milton lifted his little head for a scratch. Abigail knelt and caressed the cat’s chin lovingly. He started making soft appreciative noises as he rolled on his side, luxuriating in the attention. It was, by and large, so much easier to be affectionate with a cat.

As she stroked Milton, Abigail wondered if her sudden interest in Mr. O’Sullivan was rather similar to her own father’s decision to wed her mother. Wisdom and prudence would have steered him away from the match—the couple having nothing obvious in common, and Mr. Fossey having very little of his own fortune, being the second son of a lowly knight. But wed they had. Abigail should have been grateful that they had. After all, without their union, she would not be here.

Her mind fixated and refused to budge. What if it had been mere attraction that had tied her parents together? She never countenanced being led in such a direction herself. However, she supposed she could at least confess to herself, that was the appeal of Mr. O’Sullivan… he was attractive.

Those ice blue eyes. The firmness of his jawline. The presence and strength of him.

There was something warm…earthy about him. Which sounded strange to think of, but it was the truth—a soft kind of comfort to his face and stance as if she could lose herself within him—the piece that was madness was that Abigail thought herself capable and willing to do so.

“Abigail, is that you?” The sound of steps echoed through the house and Abigail stiffened as her eldest sister appeared.

Judith must have been in her bedroom, perhaps even having a late afternoon nap. In her arms, she carried a series of ledgers, which were stuffed with sheets of paper and what looked like note pages. Clearly, she meant to start work on them.

The hours Judith kept, the unusual sleeping patterns always struck Abigail as odd, but since Judith rarely asked what or, more importantly, where Abigail had been, it seemed sensible to extend the same courtesy in return.

“Hello,” Abigail said, trying to make herself smile. Out of the three women in her immediate family, Judith was certainly the one she was closest to, the one she deemed the worthiest of her attention, or at least the one most likely to listen and at least feign engagement in whatever Abigail might have discovered.

“Hmm,” Judith said, snaking a free hand up to rub her eyes. “You’re back later than I expected.”

“I met someone.” For some reason, an uncomfortable awareness gripped Abigail as she admitted this. She both wanted Judith to pry and hoped against reason that she wouldn’t pry too closely.

“Yes?” Judith asked.

She did not sound very interested, at least not in the way Abigail wished she would be. Surely it was worthy of note for a tourist here, not in the height of the summer months, but one who might… she needed to tell her sister more.

“A fellow scientist. A gentleman scholar based on his clothes,” lied Abigail, warming to the elaborated-on falsehood as she spoke. At least, part of her hoped to shape him into one. After all, that was what he had said he was interested in, so with enough encouragement, surely, he would see the appeal of the fossils and all they hinted at. The idea that she might have someone who shared her passion, could swap ideas around what the fossils meant historically, scientifically, and even theologically was an ever-expanding field…