The Golden Fleece Read Online Free PDF Page B

met, and he knew that all the ones he’d seen in photographs had been airbrushed, so he was slightly surprised to find that she wouldn’t have needed airbrushing. If he didn’t find her attractive, it was only because he had trained himself, for reasons of self-defense, not to find any woman attractive, in herself. One of the advantages of enhanced color sensation, he’d found, was that a supersensitivity to color allowed him to look beyond the crude kinds of visual cues that stimulated inconvenient hormonal surges. The kind of beauty that formulated his truth was not the coarse beauty of common-or-garden lust.
     
    At least, he liked to think so.
     
    When he was formally introduced to Angelica Jarndyke, Adrian, not knowing what to do, contented himself with a stiff and awkward bow. She looked him up and down, with just a little too much attention. Adrian had expected—hoped, even— that she would simply give him the once over and think: Just one more mad scientist for Jayjay’s collection , but that didn’t seem to be what she was thinking at all. Unfortunately, Adrian couldn’t read what the thinking actually was in her lack of indifference, so it just made him feel slightly paranoid. Obviously, Jason Jarndyke had told her something about the latest recruit to his team of geniuses that had been intended to provoke her interest, and it had not been entirely without effect. In all probability, Adrian thought, she wasn’t at all sure that she wanted her interest provoked, and resented the fact that it had been.
     
    Even so, and somewhat to his relief, once she had given him a long hard look, Mrs. Jarndyke went on to do exactly what Chester Hu had predicted, and did not look directly at him again throughout the entire meal. That gave him pause to relax, and to avoid looking at her. He concentrated his attention on Jason Jarndyke, the man he was supposed to impress, the helmsman of his destiny.
     
    The cuisine was basic, but top quality. Adrian had never tasted a Yorkshire pudding that hadn’t come out of a freezer-bag, and he had to admit that there was a reward in authenticity in that case, as in so many others. The beef was tissue-cultured, of course—there was no point in taking “authenticity” to absurd lengths—but it was top quality, and Adrian would have been willing to bet that it came from cells descended from a local breed, not Aberdeen Angus. He was no wine expert, but he couldn’t find any fault with Jarndyke’s much-vaunted cellar.
     
    There were no other guests at the table. Adrian knew that the Jarndykes had two children, but there was no evidence of their presence in the house, and Adrian assumed that they must both be away at a fancy prep school, being groomed for Eton or Oundle. Because Angelica Jarndyke made little effort to fulfill her duties as a hostess conversion-wise, and Adrian was too shy to do anything but react to what was said to him, Jason Jarndyke had to guide the chatter and do most of the talking himself, but he was obviously used to that.
     
    The industrialist talked and talked and talked, but he avoided being boring with practiced ease. He didn’t come across as too much of a boor, nor as overly arrogant, in spite of his cultivated bluntness and natural ebullience. He discussed current events and future possibilities—in a general sense rather than a specific one—with equal ease, and reminisced blithely without any crass braggadocio. The further the meal went, the more Adrian came to like his new employer, and the more comfortable he began to feel in his presence—until the coffee was served, and Jarndyke changed the subject without warning, as he was prone to do.
     
    “Angie thinks you’re bullshitting me,” he said, suddenly. “Not about being a genius geneticist—she’s prepared to believe that you can deliver me a Golden Fleece, of sorts—but about the other stuff. I told her what you said about the Rothko chapel, but she thinks you’re bluffing, just