Regina Scott by The Courting Campaign

to be coaxed away from his work, who had to be reminded that he had a daughter. She thought perhaps he was changing, but he was not the man she’d read about, she’d dreamed of.
    “Of course, madam,” Emma murmured with what she hoped sounded like respect.
    Mrs. Dunworthy regarded her another moment, aristocratic nose pointing in accusation. Then she straightened and turned back toward her desk.
    “So,” she said as she took her seat once more, “if you are not attempting to catch his eye, what am I to make of his sudden interest in you?”
    Would the truth be enough to allow her to keep her position? She could think of no other way to phrase it. “It’s not me he’s interested in,” she confessed. “It’s Alice.”
    Mrs. Dunworthy waved a hand. “Doubtful. He has done little for Alice since the day she was born.”
    Which hurt just to think about. “All the more reason she needs her father,” Emma persisted. “I simply thought that if I could bring them together more often, he’d realize what a darling girl she is. He’d want to spend time with her.”
    “I see,” Mrs. Dunworthy said. She rubbed one finger against her nose. “So you would have it that all this attention came about because you wished to make Sir Nicholas a better father, perhaps have him be the father for Alice you wished you had had.”
    The statement opened old wounds, made her feel raw. Yet she could not deny it. She wanted Alice to have better than she’d had. She wanted the little girl to have the best.
    “I suppose so, madam,” she said. “I’m sorry if that was overstepping my bounds.”
    Mrs. Dunworthy lowered her hand. “It was entirely beyond the scope of your duties, but I cannot disagree with your approach. He should give Alice more attention. If that is the goal of your campaign, Miss Pyrmont, you have my unqualified endorsement and everlasting gratitude.”

Chapter Eight
    H e was avoiding his work. Nick could not deny it. First he’d lingered over breakfast with Alice yesterday, and today he’d done no more than peruse his notes before discovering a fervent desire to speak to Charlotte about Miss Pyrmont’s gowns. Her gowns, for pity’s sake! That appeared to be the best he could do by way of the present he’d promised Alice he’d find her nanny. Was there ever a man more intent on malingering?
    And why? Had he truly begun to believe the accusations leveled against him?
    He could still see their faces, his colleagues who had decided to make themselves magistrate and jury. As one of a team of philosophers working to develop a safety lamp, he’d felt his own contribution to be regrettably small, merely the calculation of the heat efficiency of the material. But their leader, Samuel Fredericks, had disagreed.
    “My lords, gentlemen,” he’d said as he’d stood in front of the table over which their president, Sir Joseph Banks, presided. “I have studied our approach, gone over our calculations with exacting concentration. I simply could not understand how such a mistake could have been made.”
    Behind him, the society members seated on their hardwood pews were as stern-faced as the men in the gilt-framed portraits crowding the walls. The high-ceilinged room used by the society for its deliberations had never felt so confining.
    “Nevertheless, Mr. Fredericks,” Sir Joseph said on the other side of the table, leaning forward from his padded chair that Nick had always thought resembled a throne, “four people are dead. I am all for scientific progress, but not when it exacts such a toll.”
    His round face was solemn, his silvery hair sticking out on either side like handles on a pot. The men around him murmured their assent.
    “I cannot tell you how this accident grieves me,” Fredericks had assured him, deep voice solemn. “But I am able to report that I discovered where we went wrong. I regret to inform this council that this experiment failed because of the gross miscalculations of Nicholas