Man Who Loved Pride and Prejudice (5 page)

   He ran his finger along the edge of the lab bench. "You wouldn't know this bit even if you read every word ever written about my family."

   Cassie was growing more and more puzzled by his behavior. "Well, I suppose every family has its secrets." Not that the Westings could ever have the kind of secrets her family did.

   "He was in the Korean War, and was badly shellshocked—what we'd call severe post-traumatic stress disorder now. He was shipped home pretty much non-functional." Calder's voice became darkly sardonic. "That wasn't acceptable in the heir to the Westing fortune, especially as my other uncle was just beginning to succeed in politics. So he was secretly put into 'retirement.' When it became clear that he wasn't going to get better, they announced he had been killed in the war, quietly disinherited him, and made sure he was taken care of by people who would never breathe a word of it. It was much more acceptable to have a brother who died a heroic death than one who panicked any time he was in a room with more than two people in it."

   He had her full attention now. She didn't know how to respond to a story like that. "Sort of like Mrs. Rochester in the attic?"

   He grimaced. "Well, he was kept in a bit more comfort than that, but yes. He died about ten years ago, and his last few years were fairly good ones as better medications became available. I wasn't told the truth until after he died."

   "I'm sorry." She felt a surprising urge to reach out and touch him. She wondered what his arm would feel like under her hand.

   "As I said, I never knew him." He looked suddenly stiff. "You could sell that story to a tabloid for a great deal of money if you wanted to. I hope you won't."

   Cassie could practically see him withdraw behind his eyes. He had seemed human for a few minutes there, but now the other Calder was back. Insinuating she'd violate a confidence for money, indeed! Of course, if that little story was any indication of what his family was like, she could hardly blame him for being unpredictable.

   "Don't worry; no one will ever hear about it from me." It was good to have the reminder of how cold he was most of the time. For a moment there he had almost drawn her in. No, she found him altogether too attractive to risk allowing herself close to him. A man like Calder Westing was walking trouble.

   "Thank you. And thank you for listening." His voice was an empty, polite formality.

   "Any time." There was a brief, uncomfortable silence, during which he signaled an end to the conversation by looking around the lab.

   She stood, more to get away from him than out of any necessity. "Hang on a sec. I need to check something." She walked over to the bench where the gels were and peered at them closely. To her dismay, he followed her, and she could feel him standing behind her. "No, not ready yet!" she said with a forced cheerfulness. "It'll be a late night, I'm afraid."

   "What are they?" He was standing so close to her she could practically feel the heat of his body.

   Cassie retreated into teaching mode. "Gel electrophoresis. It separates macromolecules—DNA in this case—on the basis of size and charge. Then, by comparing it with known standards, we can identify the DNA. It's the same method they're using in the Human Genome Project, if you've heard of that."

   "Of course." His warm breath coursed along her cheek. "Do you use the entire DNA, or do you have to break it up?"

   She straightened and looked at him in surprise. Was he actually showing interest in something outside his little world? She doubted he really cared, but the teacher in her could never ignore a question. "We break it up, using restriction enzymes."

   "What DNA are you trying to identify?"

   "Actually, we aren't trying to identify it at all. We know perfectly well what it is, but we need to see if there are any differences in the DNA in specimens from the different locations we study. We don't expect to find anything, but we have to prove the differing habits aren't the results of differences in the species."

   "I don't think I know precisely what you're researching. Something about waste nitrogen."

   She glanced at him, wondering why he was interested, wishing she weren't quite so aware of how close he stood to her, and that they were alone in the lab. "The effects of excess nitrogen in waste water on the salt marsh habitat. There's a lot of fertilizer use here. The Cape is an oversized sand bar, and it isn't suited to growing lawn grass. But people want their picture-perfect lawns, so they pour on the fertilizers, and then the fertilizers end up in the wastewater and then the rivers. It's like a free feast when it reaches the salt marsh, and it disturbs the natural checks and balances of the ecosystem." She almost bit her tongue when she remembered the swath of manicured grass that surrounded Scott's house.

   But he didn't seem bothered by it and continued to ask questions about the different equipment in the lab. She showed him the specimen tanks, usually the most interesting part of the lab for visitors. Most would dip a finger in the seawater piped in from the harbor or ask to touch one of the crabs. Calder just looked from a distance as she identified the specimens. As she discovered he could grasp most of the concepts involved in her research, her explanations became more technical, until he inquired about the contents of a large metal container over the Bunsen burner at the end of the bench.

   She laughed. "I'd love to tell you it's a new experiment we're trying, but in fact that's marinara sauce. Lab dinner, you know. I should be putting in the spaghetti as well. The water must be boiling by now. It takes forever." She lifted the lid of a lobster pot sitting on a hot plate, releasing a small cloud of steam. "Yes, it's ready. People who are working late will generally drop by for some. It's a specialty of our lab."

   He didn't look pleased at the idea of people stopping by. "It smells good."

   She smiled, wondering if he would say the same thing if he knew the history of the dish. She wasn't afraid to challenge him. "Well, you're welcome to stay for some, but I don't think you'd find it up to your usual standards."

   "As long as there aren't any scientific specimens in there, I'd be delighted."

   She let out a peal of laughter. "Oh, but there are!"

   "There are?" His voice was guarded.

   "Yes. It's a tradition here. We make it with squid from the neurology labs. Squid have a giant axon—that's part of a nerve cell—that's used in neurological research, so they catch hundreds of squid for the lab, take out the one long cell, freeze the rest and give it to anyone who wants it. So, yes, there are experimental animals in it."

   "I can see that lab cooking is a science all its own." He peered into the pot of marinara.

   "Oh, you've never lived until you've eaten autoclaved lobster and mussels. Autoclaves aren't just good to sterilize supplies."

   He smiled. "Lab
cuisine,
then."

   She couldn't recall seeing him with a full smile before, and it softened the lines of his face and added a certain charm. No doubt he could be a lady-killer when he wanted. She felt an odd tug inside her. The question was why he was wasting his time touring her lab.

   She wished she knew the answer, especially as she was running out of things to show him. Well, perhaps he would leave then, and she could read the book while she waited.

   Calder inspected a shelf of journals. "Do you do this research year-round, or just in the summer?"

   "I only have access to the materials I need while I'm here during the summer, but in the winter I do data analysis, writing, and planning for the next summer. It works well because I don't have the resources—or the time, for that matter—to do serious research while I'm teaching." She wondered where this sudden curiosity about her work had come from. He had reverted to staring at her, and she had no idea what to make of it.

   "You must be very busy. Where do you teach?"

   "You've probably never heard of it. It's a small liberal arts college near Philadelphia." She was oddly reluctant to tell him, for once wishing she could name a prestigious research institution.

   "Near Philadelphia? Would that be Swarthmore? Haverford? Bryn Mawr?" He surprised her by being able to name some of the possibilities.

   "Haverford, actually. So you
have
heard of it."

   He crossed his arms and leaned back against the bench. "Yes, for some reason my parents decided to educate me, even if we did have more money than we knew what to do with."

   She gave him a sidelong glance as she poured a box of spaghetti into the boiling water, aware of the challenge in his voice. She realized with embarrassment that he was right, and she had been talking down to him, treating him like nothing more than a rich dilettante, despite the evidence before her. "A good education is never wasted. That's why I do what I do."

   "Do you plan to stay at Haverford, or are you looking to move on to a university where you can do more research?"

   She wondered if he was deliberately trying to prove he knew his way around higher education. "No, I like Haverford. My primary interest is undergraduate education. I wouldn't be able to have any real contact with students at a big university—just anonymous lecture halls and regurgitation of material on tests. I saw enough of that while I was a grad student to last me a lifetime."

   "You don't think much of big universities, do you?"

   "For undergraduate work? No. I think the job of a college is to teach students how to think, and I don't think that happens to undergrads at a big university. Universities are wonderful places to do graduate work, but for a real undergraduate education, there's nothing like a college where you interact directly with the professors." She was a little defensive, having had this argument many times with her university colleagues.

   "Where did
you
go to college?"

   She looked at him challengingly. "Wellesley—on a scholarship. How about you?"

   He smiled slightly. "Harvard."

   "A university man! I should have known. Well, I stand by what I said." She watched to see how he would take this teasing.

   "I don't disagree with you. I think I managed to get a good education there, but no doubt some things are taught better in a small college, although without the same range of courses available."

   So he wanted a debate. "As an undergraduate, it's not so much
what
you learn as
how
you learn it."

   "I guess some people must teach themselves
how
to learn on their own, then, since the universities have turned out a few successful graduates over the years."

   She looked at him closely, sizing up his ability as an adversary, when one of the researchers from a lab down the hall appeared at the door. "Hey, beautiful! Is that marinara I smell?"

   "It is indeed." The distraction was a relief from the growing tension between her and Calder. "Do you want to see who's around and hungry?"

   "Will do!" He disappeared once more.

   "Perhaps I should go."

   She glanced at him, sensing discomfort. No doubt he wanted to avoid being recognized, especially in company like hers. For that matter, she wasn't eager to have to explain his presence. She would never hear the end of having spent an evening alone with Calder Westing in her lab. "Whatever you like." The urge to tease got the better of her, however. "You're welcome to stay, assuming you can stand watching people eat laboratory specimens off paper plates."

   His eyes traveled down her face. "How can I refuse such a unique opportunity?"

   Her lips tingled. If he were another man, she would have sworn he was thinking about kissing her, but that was ridiculous. She crossed her arms and looked at him in amused challenge. "Have you ever eaten squid?"

   He startled her again with an unexpected smile. "Only when it's called calamari. I spent a semester of the time I was
wasting
at a university studying in Italy."

   She didn't understand her response when he turned that mocking look on her. Uncomfortable, she busied herself pouring out the spaghetti and digging out paper plates from a cabinet underneath the lab bench.

   Over the next few minutes, several men drifted in, most carrying some addition to dinner—a bag of cookies, a six-pack of dark beer, and some pints of ice cream the bearer stowed away in Cassie's lab freezer. Cassie greeted them each warmly, trying to decide how to handle Calder's presence.

   "This is… Stephen." Her eyes glinted with amusement as she looked at him. "He's a friend of a friend, visiting the cape. Stephen, this is John and Simon, who do research in neurophysiology, using some of those squid axons I mentioned; Arlen, who's with us from the University of Stuttgart, looking into the effects of invasive species on the local ecosystem; and Jim, who studies the ecology of Georges Bank and the effects of overfishing there. Jim was my thesis advisor in grad school, and I spent a couple of summers working in his lab here when I was a grad student."

   "And survived the experience, amazingly enough." Jim was clearly assessing Calder.

   No one stood on ceremony, helping themselves to spaghetti. Cassie realized Calder was holding back and wondered if he had lost his nerve. She made no attempt to hide her amusement when she turned to him. "It's devil take the hindmost around here, Cal… Stephen. Dig in."

   He sauntered over to the food and served himself a healthy helping of spaghetti. He turned to look at her before ladling on an extra portion of marinara sauce, the rings of squid easily visible within it.