Someone Irresistible (34 page)

Sir Harold appeared undaunted, but he adjusted his body a little where he sat. Finally, in a tone cracking with hidden emotion, he whispered, “You were deceived by my family. For me.”

At long last…

Nathan stood where he was, still and silent, staring into the man’s tired, pain-filled eyes. If he’d expected the truth to feel liberating in nature, he’d been wrong. Horribly wrong. In a manner of speaking this truth, the truth that his honor had been deliberately stolen from him by someone he’d admired personally, an intelligent man with whom he’d worked, challenged, and socialized on a professional level, hurt more than he had ever expected it would.

Sir Harold wiped a palm down his face. “You’ve got to understand that this was never about you. She never meant to do
you
any harm, to ruin
you
,” he stressed gruffly. “And after everything happened that night, she truly wished it had never taken place.” He shook his head in negation and swallowed. “But love for an aging father is blind.”

Nathan felt a dark coldness deep inside of him, felt his heart stop in his chest, his throat tighten, his breath press against his lungs.

Mimi.

Oh, God, and she had told him she loved him…

The room began to reel before him and he clutched the table with both hands, his mouth dry, unable to say anything should he try. Then he stumbled back a foot until he fell once again into the chair, his mind overflowing with disbelief—and an ageless sorrow. The knife thrust couldn’t have been any more real.

“Why?” he managed to mumble on an aching breath.

Sir Harold stared at him openly, pressing his lips together to prevent tears, before replying, “Look at my hands, Nathan.”

It took several seconds for those words to seep in. And then, very slowly, Nathan lowered his gaze to the table to observe the rugged, aging arthritic hands of a distinguished, gifted sculptor. Hands that could hardly move, much less nimbly create. In that observation lay the answer. Sculpture, not science, had been the motivation behind his

disgrace. Sculpture had been the key.

He should have known.

He glanced up at Marsh, speechless for the first time that he could recall, knowing the poignant moment between them now would be ingrained in his memory forever. Suddenly the reality of what had happened that long-ago night at the Crystal Palace began to shine through the fog as the missing pieces fell into place.

He’d been right from the beginning. Carter didn’t have the nerve, the cleverness to steal a jawbone of significant worth, nor did he realize at the time that Owen’s money would come to him should the arrogant Professor Price fail in his new endeavor. Money had never been the issue, nor Mimi’s desire to sculpt, nor even the unpretentious decision to ruin purposely a pompous man who’d pretended to excel within a class in which he did not belong. The answer, simply enough, lay in the love of a child for her adored father, her famous father, who was slowly losing his ability to create, to maintain his prestige and respect while earning a living as a sculptor for the greatest scientists of their time.

Nathan rubbed his palms along his thighs, horribly distressed, fidgety, and at the same time inexplicably moved. Unable to comment, he stood abruptly and turned away from Sir Harold’s steady gaze, raking his fingers through his hair as he stepped once again toward the cold fireplace. Arms at his sides, palms fisted, he stared down at the empty grate, lost in his own musings, realizing how little his sense of self-importance had really mattered to anyone else, and how, in an instant of time, his future had been markedly and forever changed by a woman who had befriended him, tamed him, seduced him, and then professed to love him.

The pain he felt inside at that moment was beyond anything he could ever have imagined.

“When did she do it?” he asked quietly, minutes later, studying the ornate brass andirons, trying to distance himself from the part of him that had fallen under her spell, the part of the man who’d made love to her.

“The afternoon of the opening,” Marsh disclosed, his chair creaking from his weight as he slumped into it. “She’d gone in when the display rooms weren’t yet full and the Palace not yet open, lifted it onto a rolling board, covered it, and walked out. Just as simply as that. I imagine she thought if anyone asked, she could easily say she was taking it to Sir Harold Marsh to sketch before sculpting, and that it would soon be returned. As it was, nobody even noticed her.”

Nathan began to feel anger burn anew. “When did you learn Mimi

was involved in its theft?”

Marsh sighed heavily. “Just after Carter’s death, when she came to me and suggested she start sculpting for me, with no one the wiser. I’d never thought of such an unusual idea before, but it had merit. Mimi is very talented and understands Dinosauria better than any artist alive.”

He lowered his voice with meaning. “It also gave her something to do with her time. She was disturbed by her husband’s swift and untimely death, and very lonely.”

That statement made his chest constrict, but Nathan refused to let it in. Instead, he stood quietly for a moment, thinking rapidly, trying to come to terms with all he’d learned in the last ten minutes that he’d wanted to know for years.

Suddenly he looked at the older man, his brows drawn into a deep frown. “Why did you switch the jawbone for the sculpture before the banquet?”

Marsh slowly closed his eyes, features taut, but said nothing.

Nathan turned to face him fully, shoulders back, arms dropped to his sides as he fisted his hands. “You set out to ruin me again? When everybody could have seen the jawbone—the real jawbone—for the first time?”

Sir Harold thumped his palm on the table, startling him.

“What would you have me do, Nathan?” he asked briskly, sitting forward and looking at him again, irritation coloring his voice. “Tell my employer and contemporaries, including Waterhouse Hawkins, my professional rival, that I’d dishonored you in the most insulting and devastating manner? That my
daughter
had dishonored you without thought to your reputation because she worried, as any female would, that I could no longer work?” He waved his palm and pulled down hard on his waistcoat. “You know I could never allow that to happen.”

“But you knew she would switch the sculpture for the jawbone the night of the banquet?” he maintained, incredulous. “How is that, sir?”

“She loves you,” he spat vehemently.

Nathan felt slapped. So much so that he physically jerked from the words, his jaw tightening even as his insides liquefied. For the first time before any of the Marshes, he acknowledged his deepest feelings for the woman who had betrayed him.

“You realized how I felt about her,” he whispered, “and that I would tell one of the most distinguished group of gentlemen in all of England that she’d been the one to sculpt my Megalosaur.”

It was a moment of sorrowful truth. For both of them.

Then Sir Harold lowered his lashes, looked blankly at his hands, and admitted in one still breath, “Yes.”

And that was the answer.

Bitter silence descended upon them, enveloped them in its own intensity. Nathan couldn’t bring himself to move. He stared at the man he had once so admired, had grown to hate, and whom he now respected intensely for the one secret he would always keep that revealed his deepest love for his daughter.

“You did it for Mimi,” he said softly. “You did it to keep her and your family from being suspects in its theft, and so I would expose her as the magnificent Megalosaur sculptor, thereby making everyone at the banquet aware of her talent.” He swallowed. “But it cost you.”

Sir Harold shook his head, his lips turning upward faintly. “It’s time for me to retire, to let my aching joints speak for themselves. I would have had to do so eventually, but now it can be with a purpose.” He waited, then added, “I won’t have to hide my affliction anymore.”

Nathan inhaled deeply, resentful that he had been so used, but accepting it as well. Slowly he strode back to his chair and lowered his body onto the softly cushioned seat again, reaching for his teacup of brandy. He’d drained it earlier, so he helped himself to more of the smooth, sweet drink, taking two or three swallows before glancing up and across the desk to Marsh, to the tired, aging face that had finally revealed the lies that would lead to an ultimate good.

But it didn’t negate the fact that he’d been cheated out of years of reliable work and excellent pay, out of his own museum project, and that his reputation had been severely, if not irreversibly, damaged. The resignation Nathan now experienced only slightly dimmed his resentment.

“Do you know how hard I worked, Sir Harold?” he asked passionately, replacing the cup on the saucer and sitting forward, elbows on knees, fingers interlocked in front of him. “Can you imagine how much effort someone of my station must take, how much ridicule one of my class must endure, to get where I had in my professional career, only to have it stolen from me?” He absolutely despised the necessity of revealing his long-felt indignation at having to try harder, to submit to more prying questions, to be judged more harshly, even unfairly, and then to be accused of his own downfall. All because one of his class was never expected to succeed.

But those dark, penetrating brown eyes that were so like his daughter’s never once wavered in embarrassment, pity, or disgust. They expressed only an honest remorse, and perhaps a distant sadness.

“Of course I know,” the older man replied gruffly, intensely. “But the scheme—the theft—was executed without my knowledge. When at last I’d learned of what had taken place that night, it was too late to do anything. The damage had been done. You’d left the country, Carter was dead, Mimi had already begun sculpting. The affair had been over for more than a year.” He rubbed his brows with his fingertips, then added,

“Perhaps I was wrong, but at the time I felt it should all just rest.”

“But that doesn’t explain why she took
my
fossil,” he articulated with fervor. “And why then?”

“So I wouldn’t have to sculpt it.”

Of course. The sculpture commission would have gone to Sir Harold.

All major finds of that size did. Yet he’d worked since then, though it was true that Mimi had taken over his assignments only a few months later. Undoubtedly Marsh could handle creating works of singular ease such as simple thigh bones. But the jawbone was a magnificent find, a one of a kind fossil that would prove to be a spectacular addition to the Palace display, and if sculpted by Sir Harold’s aging hands, the world—

or at least, those who mattered in the field—would learn of his growing incompetence.

Nathan closed his eyes, hanging his head low, listening to the roaring thunder in his mind, the ticking of a clock on the mantelpiece, the thickening of the afternoon rain as drops of water struck the windowpane.

“Where is my treasure now?” he asked quietly, moments later.

Marsh exhaled through his teeth. “I gave it back to Mimi.”

His head popped up. “You did what?”

“I gave it back—”

“I heard you,” he cut in, annoyed. “But why? Why the devil did she want it?”
And why hasn’t she brought it to me
?

He knew the answer to that.

Because you didn’t want her.

“I don’t know,” Marsh replied with flat features. “But she insisted.”

He raised a brow. “Maybe you’ll need to ask her for it yourself.”

Nathan didn’t know whether to laugh or to break things. What an absurdity his life had become. Mimi Marsh Sinclair, in all her lovely sneakiness, would someday be the death of him. Of that he had no doubt.

With silence raging between them once more, Nathan placed his palms on his thighs and pushed himself up, standing in front of the desk, tall and unyielding. Sir Harold did the same, with a great deal

more difficulty, and for the first time Nathan took note of the grimace that crossed the man’s face, the acute discomfort. Sadly, his daughters had no doubt witnessed his deteriorating body for years.

He faced Marsh, nearly eye to eye. “Thank you for your time, Sir Harold.”

The older man squared his shoulders, but didn’t offer his hand, for which Nathan was grateful. The healing, if there was to be any between them, would be gradual, and with so much still at stake, it wasn’t the time to mend wounds. Not completely.

“I’ve never told this to anyone,” Marsh disclosed quietly, “but I knew of Mimi’s romantic feelings for you years ago, when she would eavesdrop on our conversations, would speak of you in a dreamlike manner, ask about you constantly.” He shook his head in wonder, in remembrance. “Girls.”

Nathan ground his fingers into his palms, uncomfortable as he felt a warmth creeping up his neck again. But he didn’t move or look away.

Through a sigh, Sir Harold continued, undaunted. “Like Mimi, I would have preferred you to Carter, Nathan, as a son-in-law. I wish things had been different between you and my sweet but crafty daughter.”

Nathan blinked, startled.

Suddenly Marsh turned and walked around the desk, toward his study door. “Forgive me for leaving like this, but I must speak to my cook about the damn pheasant he served last night. Too tough. Any good cook worth one-tenth what I pay mine knows if the bird is tough, serve gravy!”

With that bellowed pronouncement, Sir Harold quit the room as Nathan simply stared at the doorway in astonishment.

He left the Marsh home immediately, lost in reflection, seeing no one upon his departure, unconcerned with the pelting rain that hit the brim of his hat and the shoulders of his morning suit. In truth, he hardly noticed it. He was numb inside from the afternoon’s revelations; the chilly air did nothing to alter his state of being.

He heard footsteps behind him, but the pedestrian walkway, even in certain downpour, remained heavily congested anyway, and with his head down, he didn’t notice the woman approaching him from behind until she called after him rather loudly.

“Professor Price!”

He stopped short and turned, thinking, for the slightest of seconds,

that it sounded just like Mimi, then realizing with arresting expectation that it was Mary instead.