The Captain's Frozen Dream. Georgie Lee

animal, she could prove it was her brains and not her favours which had gained her past notice. If she succeeded, it would mean work as an illustrator, money from publishing books and pamphlets, and the security she’d craved since the day she’d taken over the finances in her mother’s absence and seen the harsh truth of her and her father’s situation.

      Katie fingered one of the creature’s sharp teeth. Staying was risky. Conrad was tenacious in his determination to achieve whatever it was he set his mind to and now it was focused on her. However, she had only to hold out until Mr Barrow’s next order came through and pulled his focus, and presence, away from her. As much as she didn’t want to be here with him, leaving Conrad meant leaving the bones and she couldn’t do it.

      ‘All right, I’ll stay and examine the creature.’ A smile of victory spread over Conrad’s lips, as annoying as it was tempting, but she wasn’t about to let him believe he’d won. She was staying for her benefit, not his. ‘But it will be like it was when my father worked for you. You’ll pay me just as you paid him.’

      Conrad scooped up the skull and laid it back in the crate. ‘I won’t.’

      ‘Then I won’t stay.’ She crossed her arms over her chest, as much to emphasise her seriousness as to calm her fears over losing access to the creature. ‘This is to be a business deal like any other and when it’s done that’ll be the end of it.’ And us.

      ‘All right,’ he conceded, picking up the lid to the crate and setting it down over the top, covering the bones. ‘Draw up a list of things you need from Whitemans Green and I’ll send someone to fetch them and close up your house. When you’re finished with your research you may keep the fossil, and the paper, and your drawings.’

      ‘If I’m to keep everything, what do you hope to get out of this arrangement?’

      ‘You.’ He brushed her lightly under the chin, the same self-satisfied smile he’d worn the first time he’d stolen a kiss from her in the study drawing up the corners of his wide mouth. ‘I’ll have Mr Peet bring the crate to the conservatory. I expect your work to be very interesting and revealing.’

      Before she could tell him what to do with his expectations he slipped into the stable, his muffled instructions to Mr Peet carrying over the shift and whinny of the horses.

      Katie slammed the top of the crate with her palm, dislodging the lid. It fell into the dirt, revealing the creature’s menacing smile. Her weakness and Conrad’s glib determination frustrated her. She shouldn’t remain here and torture herself with what couldn’t be or give Conrad false hope for reconciliation, but she couldn’t give up this specimen either.

      Motion near the house caught her attention and she looked up to meet Miss Linton’s pinched scowl. Worry slid through Katie like it had the day she’d narrowly missed being hit by a rock falling from the side of a slate mine. She and Conrad had always been careful when Katie had been here before, only intimate with one another late at night or far from the house. She wondered how much Miss Linton had seen of her and Conrad’s embrace. It’d been innocent enough, but Miss Linton wasn’t likely to view it in such a way and it wouldn’t be long before the spinster was adding yet another nasty rumour to those already circulating. Once again Katie would be judged for something she didn’t do instead of on the merit of her work.

      Katie picked up the crate lid and set it back over the animal. Tracing the words burned into the wood, she wondered if there was something more for her in life than fossils and research. Her father had never given her the chance to discover it and necessity had forced her to keep on with his work.

      Katie made for the house, determined not to endure the spinster’s disapproving scowl or entertain her own doubts a moment longer. This was her calling, as much as it’d been her father’s, and she would use it to make her way and prove everyone like Miss Linton wrong. They might scoff at her in England, but in America there were many she corresponded with, their eagerness to acquire the specimens she unearthed matched by their enthusiasm to exchange ideas, illustrations and knowledge with her. They cared nothing for her gender or the rumours circulating in London and their admiration was such that Mr Lesueur had invited her to join him as an illustrator on his next expedition West. She hadn’t turned down his generous offer, but she hadn’t accepted it either. There’d been a time when she wouldn’t have dreamed of leaving England; now it was more tempting than ever. With the money from Conrad, she could afford passage, if she wanted it.

      She paused outside the conservatory door, uncertain if she should leave, or if there was anything left in England to keep her here. She’d soon find out. Where Lord Helton and his vicious stories had lowered her, the bones could raise her up. If this animal was as rare as she believed, any paper she published about it would be the making of her. It had to be, she possessed little else to believe in.