Ainsley lifted his glass and then set it back down without a drink, tapping his chin. “I’m sure Barley said your name was something less provocative, but I’m a good sport.” He stood and stretched his lean body like a cat before he pulled the servants’ bell. At least, Joachim assumed it was to alert servants—he’d never seen one before. But in a house this size, there must be a better method than shouting to fetch someone.

“I sent everyone—including my mother—away aside from Nelson, and he’ll be serving supper before he leaves, too. Nothing fancy, but I don’t think you came for the food, did you?” Ainsley winked and refilled Joachim’s glass, clinking it against the side of his before settling back down on the sofa. Any closer, and he’ll be in my lap.

Bloody hell, the room was over-warm, matching his host’s gaze. “I didn’t, and I’m not particular about what I eat. I came to mine your brain for research, didn’t I?” Because it was best to discuss his purpose for coming such a long way. He had a doctoral thesis to write, after all: the manifestation of delusions in those otherwise accounted as sane.

From what he’d read, Ainsley Graham fit the bill.

After a lecture two weeks earlier, Stuart Graham had found Joachim at a pub reading one of Ainsley’s books. Once Stuart finished his drink, he sheepishly admitted to their being brothers and offered to wrangle an introduction. Assured Joachim that he would be welcomed for a visit to see the haunted sites Ainsley had publicly verified to the chagrin of his university colleagues.

“Is he sane?” Joachim’s stomach had lurched at the idea of spending a week with a madman. He’d spent countless hours working at the asylum near his university, but those were patients and Joachim wasn’t alone with any of the truly dangerous ones.

Stuart had flushed with what may have been relief, or perhaps his third gin, nodding. “Er, yes. Let’s say he’s an eccentric. Ainsley’s a certified genius with no sense of self-preservation, whatsoever.” He excused it with the comment that Ainsley was the result of a second marriage to a flighty woman who’d indulged her own three children to the point of criminality. And if Ainsley Graham was a bit of a crank, that was all her doing.

And now, Joachim was in Scotland with a gorgeous—and he must remember, potential—madman, utterly unsure of how to proceed.

Stuart’s brother resumed his position with his foot on the log and dug into the fire once more. “Research.” He tossed Joachim another grin over his shoulder. A perfectly squared shoulder for all its slenderness. It matched the proportions of the rest of his shape—long, lean muscles that would likely not thicken as he aged.