Affair Read Free Page A

Baxter’s path. “You bloody fool. You cannot stop me.”
    “The fire is spreading quickly. Run, for God’s sake.”
    But Morgan ignored the warning. Features twisted in rage, he dashed the contents of the green bottle straight at Baxter.
    Acting on instinct, Baxter covered his eyes with his arm and turned away.
    The acid struck his shoulder and back. For a second he felt nothing except a curiously cold sensation. It was as if he had been doused with water. But in the next instant, the chemicals finished eating through his linen shirt and seared his bare skin.
    Pain lanced through him, a scorching agony that threatened to destroy his concentration. He forced himself to focus only on the need to escape.
    Fire blossomed quickly in the stone chamber. A thick, foul smoke was beginning to form as more flasks shattered and released their contents to the flames.
    Morgan lunged for a drawer, opened it, and produced a second pistol. He whirled toward Baxter, squinting to aim the weapon through the growing pall of vapors.
    Baxter felt as if his skin were being peeled off in strips. Through a growing haze of smoke and pain he saw that the path to the door was already blocked by towering flames. There would be no escape in that direction.
    He lashed out with one booted foot and kicked over the heavy air pump. It toppled against Morgan’s left leg.
    “God damn you.” Morgan staggered to the side as the device struck him. He fell to his knees. The pistol clattered on the stones.
    Baxter ran for the window. The pieces of his ruined shirt flapped wildly. He gained the wide, stone sill and glanced down.
    Below lay a roiling, churning sea. In the thin, silver moonlight he could see the foaming surf as it crashed against the rocks that formed the foundation of the ancient castle.
    The pistol thundered.
    Baxter flung himself toward the dark waters. A series of fiery explosions echoed in the night as he plummeted downward.
    He managed to miss the rocks but the impact tore Morgan Judd’s notebook from his grasp. It vanished forever into the depths.
    When he surfaced a moment later amid the pounding waves, Baxter realized that his eyeglasses were also gone.But he did not need them to see that the laboratory in the castle tower had turned into an inferno. Terrible smoke billowed forth into the night.
    No one could live through such a conflagration. Morgan Judd was dead.
    Baxter considered the fact that he had brought about the death of the man who had once been his closest friend and colleague.
    It was almost enough to make a man believe in the notion of destiny.

One
    London, three years later
    “You leave me no option but to be blunt, Mr. St. Ives. Unfortunately, the truth of the matter is that you are not quite what I had in mind in the way of a man-of-affairs.” Charlotte Arkendale clasped her hands together on top of the wide mahogany desk and regarded Baxter with a critical eye. “I am sorry for the waste of your time.”
    The interview was not going well. Baxter adjusted the gold-framed eyeglasses on the bridge of his nose and silently vowed that he would not give in to the impulse to grind his back teeth.
    “Forgive me, Miss Arkendale, but I was under the impression that you wished to employ a person who appeared completely innocuous and uninteresting.”
    “Quite true.”
    “I believe your exact description of the ideal candidatefor the position was, and I quote,
a person who is as bland as a potato pudding.
”
    Charlotte blinked wide, disconcertingly intelligent, green eyes. “You do not comprehend me properly, sir.”
    “I rarely make mistakes, Miss Arkendale. I am nothing if not precise, methodical, and deliberate in my ways. Mistakes are made by those who are impulsive or inclined toward excessive passions. I assure you, I am not of that temperament.”
    “I could not agree with you more on the risks of a passionate nature,” she said quickly. “Indeed, that is one of the problems—”
    “Allow me to read to you