As she walked up the steps to the front of her house, Zan noticed a sleek dark phaeton with a pair of black Arabians parked on the curb of the street. A gangly boy of perhaps thirteen to fifteen held the reins, waiting in a rather detached manner for the owner to show up.
At the door, Simkins took her hat and said, “Mr. Caradon arrived earlier wanting to see you. I have put him in the sitting room.”
“Thank you, Simkins.” She proceeded down the hallway to the sitting room and stopped at the doorway.
Even in daylight and impeccably dressed, Caradon still appeared imposing. Today he was wearing a dark brown suit, a waistcoat of a slightly lighter shade and a matching tie. All of this plain, but quite expensive—evidence of his fortune made in the shipping business. He stood up from his seat on one of the high-backed chairs and suddenly she was rather aware that he was like a giant among gaudy toys. The sitting room was rather fussy. Too fussy. And Zen resolved to throw out of the many vases the next time she had a free moment, regardless of future visitors with bad taste.
“Mr. Caradon.”
“Miss Hu. I hope I haven’t come at a particularly bad time but we did have an appointment.”
“In the afternoon, I thought. It is lunch time now.”
“I believe half-past noon is the afternoon.”
“I see you’re a stickler for technicalities,” she replied frowning. But she couldn’t very well throw him out. He was her source of income. “Very well. Why don’t we discuss my plans in the laboratory? It is easier for any possible demonstrations.”
“I am amendable to that.”
Zan stepped back out into the hallway to tell Simkins to inform Mrs. Philomon to bring down a light lunch to the laboratory. As she proceeded down to the laboratory, she was acutely aware of Caradon moving behind her despite his eerily noiseless footsteps.
“I was aware,” she said as she began to light the lamps in the basement, “that my uncle sent you quarterly reports every year to keep you up to date on his progress. Do you wish to continue that arrangement?”
“That sounds reasonable.”
As she finished lighting the last lamp, she went to stand next to the table in the center of the room. She realized that her reticule with her uncle’s notes was still dangling from her wrist. Hastily, she pulled open a drawer, dropped the bag inside, and closed it, hoping that Caradon did not notice her furtive behavior. Then for a moment, she stared at what was left of Uncle Elliot’s half of the laboratory. Despite the piles of unused materials, it felt stripped and empty. A lump formed in her throat and she tried to swallow.
“Miss Hu, are you all right?”
Her vision focused back on her guest who had grabbed a stool and was sitting across from her at the table. He wasn’t smiling, but his expression was oddly calming and sympathetic.
“My father passed away a year ago, just as suddenly,” he said. “I knew of him my entire life but didn’t really meet him until a couple years ago. But it was still hard.”
She nodded. “It was kind of you, though, to take up the patron agreement your father had with my uncle.”
“Kind?” He regarded her, eyes suddenly hard. “Be careful of ascribing so many benevolent qualities on me, Miss Hu.”
A warning? She wondered. There was a clatter on the stairs and Miss Philomon appeared in a voluminous gray apron and a silver tray laden down with soup and sandwiches and tea. The housekeeper eyed Caradon with suspicion and distrust before setting the tray down at the table. Caradon merely looked back at the housekeeper with an enigmatic smile.
“Will that be all, Miss Hu?”
“Yes, thank you, Mrs. Philomon.”
The housekeeper gave an unsatisfied huff and then tromped back up the stairs. As her footsteps receded, Zan began to pour the tea.
“Before my uncle’s death,” she began as she arranged the plates and bowls and motioned for Caradon to help himself, “I was in the middle of a project in which I was identifying the composition of some samples a member of the Academy had obtained from a coal mine on the Continent. Then once that was done, I would be comparing that analysis with an earlier analysis I had made of a coal mine about fifty miles north of Amanthus.”
As he ate, Caradon asked, “And what will all that analysis yield?”
“Presently, we do not know how coal is naturally produced. I was hoping with the analysis, I would be able to compile a list of all the materials that all coal sites have in common. Then perhaps I could form a hypothesis for coal production. Think of the benefits we could reap if we could produce coal in unlimited quantities.”
“Tremendous benefit, no doubt. All of the newer machines are powered by burning coal.” He nodded. “Sounds like an admirable enough endeavor.”
As she took a sip of tea and a bit of her sandwich—Boreas had made roast beef this time—she mused, “But what I don’t understand is why I find so many microfossils at the coal sites.”
“Microfossils? You’ve lost me, Miss Hu.”
“I’ve heard of them in one of the biology talks in the Academy,” she said. “Microfossils—very small fossils of tiny creatures that lived long ago. It’s theorized that these creatures were actually sea creatures.”
“And these microfossils, they were found on land?”
“The theory continues that the area used to be covered by a shallow sea that somehow drained off or dried out later.” Somewhat distracted as she turned to survey her own part of her laboratory, she continued, “I don’t know why so much organic matter is there. Did they contribute to the formation of coal?” She restlessly shrugged her shoulders and abandoned her lunch for a table with a microscope. “I have some of them on glass slides.”
Curious, Caradon followed her and watched as she took out a slide from a box and adjusted its placement on the microscope stage. Deftly, she manipulated the focus with a few quick twists of the knobs controlling the objectives and stepped away, motioning him to take a look. He brushed past her to look through the lens and she caught a whiff of scent that made her skin prickle. No, it wasn’t the strongly spicy cologne that men of fashion were accustomed to wearing. It was more subtle than that—woodsy and faintly musky. Like a forest. She backed away half a step, afraid that she would involuntarily lean over and put her nose to his hair. Her fingernails itched, wanting to become claws.
“Fascinating. The skeletons of these little creatures are so varied. Some of them look like hydra with their little tentacles and some look like tiny stars. And yet others appear to be simply strangely shaped cages with fine netting…” He stopped talking when he looked up at her. He glanced down in the direction of her hands, she quickly put them behind her back. When he raised his head, she thought his eyes looked a little strange although at the moment, she couldn’t put her finger on what exactly was wrong.
“I know,” she said quickly. “Those tiny sea creatures were a varied lot, weren’t they? But perhaps they were simply at the wrong place at the wrong time and they had nothing to do with the formation of coal deposits.”
“I would have no idea,” he replied. “I would leave the answers to you and your scientific acumen.”
She edged back to the table with their half finished lunches. “Oh! We better get back to our soup before it gets cold. I apologize for babbling on so. Sometimes I can get carried away.”
“Apparently just like your uncle.” Caradon let himself be led back to the table.
“You mean lecture you?” Zan shook her head. “I should think that he was trying to update you on his studies. But sometimes he can forget that he is speaking to someone who is not so familiar with the technicalities.”
“That does not bother me. After reading his reports, I have a grasp of the concepts. A poor grasp, but a grasp nonetheless. And I am not so blind as to not see possible applications. Your field is different so perhaps you should enlighten me on the basics.”
“If you wish.”
His lips curved. “Please give compliments from me to your cook for an excellent lunch. We can discuss this further in, perhaps, a less enclosed area? We can go for a ride in the park. I find that my mind is more amendable to new ideas in more open spaces.”
“Fine. I suppose, then, that you rarely attend the lectures my uncle gave at the Academy?”
“The reports were enough.”
Then he leaned over to touch the jade fox pendant that had somehow fallen out of her blouse neckline. She felt the faint pressure against the bone just below her throat as his finger briefly brushed against the design. His face was inches away and she noticed that his pupils were not quite round. And she wondered why she had been so hasty in accepting his invitation for a ride in the park. Perhaps she needed a chaperon to rein in her impulsiveness.
“How unusual,” he said as he sat back.
“It belonged to my father.”
“The designs on jade necklaces are usually dragons or symbols of good luck. The jade itself is believed to symbolize a whole host of good qualities—like wisdom and courage and justice. But the fox itself is a wily creature—the symbol for tricksters, drunks, seductresses. A contradiction, isn’t it?”
She frowned. “You say it as if a fox is a bad creature. My uncle had once told me that foxes were also the symbols for scholars and devoted lovers and those with a moral heart. My father was a scholar and he was certainly devoted to my mother and I had no doubt he owned this because of what good it represented to him.”
Caradon gave a short bark of laughter. To Zan, it sounded like a loud challenge. “Then it would be quite interesting, wouldn’t it, to see what side would win?”
