A sharp wrap on the front door interrupted any response.
Edison exchanged a look with his cousin-in-law. As if of one mind, they both rose from the table. Being closer to the entryway, Spencer took point. He reached for the door while Edison waited behind it, a stout umbrella in his grasp.
As soon as he heard the familiar voice, Edison lowered his weapon. “Burke.”
The tall detective strode into the house, his gaze pointed and assessing. “If I were a betting man, I’d put down twenty quid there’s an admiral lurking about the premises. One seems to’ve gone missing.”
“In the dining room.” Spencer pointed the way.
Burke sighed and headed in to the room. “Of course he is.”
“Admiral Helmsley, sir.” Burke sketched the man a short bow.
“And you are?”
“Detective Inspector Caleb Burke, sir. From the Yard. It seems you’ve been… misplaced.”
“Misplaced nothing.” The glass of ale in the man’s hand sloshed precariously as he waved it about. “This lot kidnapped me, is what happened. Not that I plan to press charges.” He smiled at Ada like a doting grandfather. “I’ve been worried about Mrs. Templeton. Good to have my mind at ease over that business.”
Burke shot Edison a sharp look before addressing the admiral. “May I escort you home? Your wife will be worried.”
The older man rose slowly, as if his joints might not move as easily as they once did. “Splendid. Need to prepare for a bore of an engagement.” He sighed. “The wife’s idea.”
He made his way around the table, but stopped just inside the doorway to look back at Ada. “That battery of yours is a splendid device. Splendid. Get this business done up and Her Majesty’s Navy still wants it.”
He looks at the men. “You keep her safe, or I’ll have my best officers after you lot.”
Edison met his gaze. “You have our word.” As long as he breathed, nothing would harm her.
Admiral Helmsley stared back, as if taking his measure, then nodded. “See to it.”
Before following his charge, Burke leveled them with a measured look. “I’d like to head home and take my boots off. Could you leave off the kidnapping for the rest of the night?”
Meena grinned at him. “Cross our hearts.”
Burke snorted. “Wish I could say that was reassuring.”
Meena and Briar chuckled and shared a look, before Briar waggled her fingers at him. “Enjoy your evening, Detective.”
Edison followed the men to the door and locked it behind them.
He returned to the dining room, but remained in the doorway, taking in the conversation. He wanted to think he was concentrating on creating a new plan, but the truth was he couldn’t take his gaze of off Ada.
How had he ever thought her too reserved? Too aloof? Too rigid to warm a man’s bed?
Perhaps—as Briar and Meena continued to remind him—he was a jelly-brained idiot, too intent on his own pleasure to think beyond the next conquest.
“We’ll need a reason for you to be in a public place at a pre-arranged time,” Meena was explaining. “A place that’ll tempt our man to make a move.”
Ada shuddered. It was a tiny movement. He wouldn’t have caught it a week ago, before he knew her so intimately.
She was trying to put on a brave face, but he could feel the fear wrapping its tentacles around her. She lived in a world of orderly chaos, where chemical reactions might go awry, but where her larger world ticked along with great predictability.
A world without violence.
A world as foreign to him as the House of Lords.
A world with no place for a man like him.
Edison sank back down in his chair, his stomach curiously hollow.
Nelly rushed in from the kitchen, a gnarled ball of newsprint in her small fist. “I have just the thing.”
She dropped the paper on the table, pressing it flat with her palms. “I was just about to toss this in the cooker to bring up the fire when I saw it.” She squinted down at the page. “Says here there’s to be a talk on noble metals put on by the London Chemical Society this Friday at their meeting rooms.” She looked up. “I think Mrs. Templeton oughta march right in there and show those old men what for.”
Edison couldn’t disagree.
He wanted to. He wanted to keep things just as they were for as long as he could, but he’d never been one to believe in fairytales. Every story he knew had a bad ending.
It seemed his was coming more quickly than he’d expected.
*
For a Navy man, Ravensworth showed a shocking lack of fortitude.
And even less foresight.
Seeking him out in his own offices had been a grave error. Doing so in full uniform sealed the man’s fate.
The man stood before him, chest heaving, mustache soaked with sweat, as if he’d been chased by the devil himself.
“The bloke barged his way into the admiral’s office,” Ravensworth explained, his words slowed by his ragged breathing. “Next thing I knew, the admiral was gone.”
He twisted his white uniform cap about in his hands as he spoke, his gaze flitting about the room like a frightened rabbit expecting a hunter to strike.
Which, of course, he would.
Sooner rather than later.
Anticipation brought a smile to his lips. “Not to worry,” he offered soothingly. “I know exactly who it was.”
“You do?”
“I do.” He nudged the crystal inkwell at the top of his leather blotter, aligning it until the object was square to the edge. “A man of no consequence whatever.”
“Thank God.” The navy man slumped down in the chair across the desk as if his legs had given out beneath him. “I was worried we’d been found out. Ever since that woman escaped…”
Anger twisted in his gut at the memory. He waved off the rest of the man’s boring recitation.
She escaped him once. It wouldn’t happen a second time.
He’d have her device. He’d have her fame and her accolades and the fortune that went along with them.
“So do we rescue Admiral Helmsley?” The small-minded twit scratched at the corner of his mouth. “I can have a detachment of sailors ready in an hour. They could--”
“Secrecy.” He cut the man off. “This plan relies on the utmost secrecy. Send out your men, and we’ll have too many people asking questions.”
Ravensworth’s mustache quivered as he licked his lips. “Right. I see what you mean. What’s next then?”
“Mrs. Templeton will show us the way.”
The idiot stared, puzzlement plain in his watery gaze.
“She’ll have to move forward at some point.” He outlined the obvious. “She’ll need to show herself. Show the device. If she waits too long, she risks someone else perfecting their own version.”
“So you see,” he said as he crossed to the decanter beneath the window, “waiting won’t serve her.”
He held up the brandy, a question in his eyes.
“By all means.” Ravensworth nodded too readily, too eagerly. “Just the thing.”
“Isn’t it just,” he whispered to himself as he added a pinch of white powder to his guest’s glass. “Isn’t it just.”
Chapter 20