Outrageously Yours by Allison Chase Read Free Book Online

me.”
    Colin scrutinized Simon through half-closed lids. “As always, you remain a mystery wrapped in an enigma. What does the Mad Marquess of Harrow have up his sleeve?”
    “You’ll see soon enough.” Simon worked at not clenching his teeth, though his muscles had tensed at the moniker that had dogged him since his wife’s death a year and a half ago. Perhaps he had deserved it then, when the slightest provocation had prompted storms of ranting and days of sequestering himself in his laboratory. Grief had driven him nearly beyond the brink, until the people of Cambridge and even his own servants had begun to whisper and to fear him, just a little. And sometimes a lot.
    There were men who would not have made it out of that office without blood flowing from one appendage or another, but Simon extended privileges to his fellow Galileans that he would never have tolerated from outsiders. “The Mad Marquess” had become a kind of dark joke between them, a perverse term of affection from the men who knew and understood him best.
    Only . . . he had privately revoked such privileges from Colin, but damn the insolent bastard for being too thick-headed to perceive the obvious.
    “Gentlemen.” Ben held out his hands and said evenly, “A breakthrough for one of us will be a breakthrough for all. As you very well know, Simon, the Copley Medal is more than a carrot. Ah, but I suppose for an aristocrat with a sizable fortune, the grant that accompanies the honor seems a mere pittance.”
    It was true, he didn’t need the funding that came along with the Copley Medal, not in the way Ben or Errol did. Once, the true prize for him would have been winning the instant respect of the scientific community, and bringing his innovations to the forefront. Lately, however, awards and fame no longer held much appeal. Results were now his carrot, breakthroughs the only form of accolade he desired.
    “Let’s strike a bargain.” Ben’s dark eyes twinkled, yet behind their humor lay an admonishment, that of a miner’s son who’d first entered Cambridge as a subsizar, performing menial tasks in exchange for his education. “Should either of you win, feel free to donate your grant directly to the university, preferably to the School of Natural Philosophies.”
    Simon chuckled. “That’s a promise.”
    “To be sure.” Colin delivered an enthusiastic slap to the back of the chair he straddled. “But perhaps a moot point for me this year, and Errol, too. Our present work in electrochemical conversions isn’t typically the stuff of Copley Medals. Not flashy enough.”
    “It will be once you employ it to ensure this country’s yearly harvests.” Ben drained his teacup. “Ah, but the consortia will commence soon enough, and it will be up to the Royal Society to decide who wins this year’s medal.”
    He spoke of the process whereby scientists gathered in appointed places throughout the country each year to discuss and demonstrate their recent discoveries. Representatives from England’s Royal Society would attend, take detailed notes, and report back to their peers on the most innovative breakthroughs.
    Ben’s mouth filled with one last biscuit, he rolled his shoulders as he often did in an attempt to loosen the muscles damaged in a cave-in when he was a boy. That accident had marked his final stint in the mines, for immediately afterward his parents had apprenticed him to a relative, an apothecary in Cardiff.
    After consulting his watch, Ben came to his feet and tugged his coat into place. “If you’ll both excuse me, I’ve a lecture to deliver.”
    Outside, Simon set off down a walkway beneath the golden canopy of a double row of oaks. His destination lay several minutes away on Market Street, at a tiny dark-paneled pub that served some of the finest home-brewed ale in all of East Anglia.
    “Simon, wait.”
    His instincts urged him to keep walking, but with a resigned sigh he halted and turned.
    Colin slowed down from a