Chemistry of Magic

by Patricia Rice

  The tension flowed out of her. She would have a few hours to set up a worktable, although the problem of the leaky ceiling needed to be addressed. “I’m sure Robert could carry the tub upstairs. We’ll need to hire someone as large as him to take his place when he goes back to Ashford.”

  “Shall I order him to start filling it for you, my lady?” Dare asked with a leering lift of his eyebrow.

  Oh dear, she must be strong and resist temptation, drat the man! “If you don’t mind, I have a few things I must do as well. Perhaps. . .” A daring thought occurred to her, and she attempted a leer of her own. “We might share the water later?”

  He chuckled and kissed her cheek. “I’ll arrange that.”

  She held her cheek after he left for his office. What would it be like to exchange real kisses, the kind she’d despised when other men had tried?

  Sadly, she would never know, unless someone proved consumption wasn’t contagious.

  Rather than pursue that dismal line of thought, Emilia went in search of oilcloth. She would have to ask Dare if replacing glass would fit into their budget.

  Dare carried his supply of Fowler’s Solution out the back door to his workshop. The bottles had been sealed when he’d purchased them. He couldn’t imagine anyone regularly adding poison every time he opened one. Cousin Peter might like to hasten his death, but his cousin had the spine of a jellyfish and the brains of a toad. It would never occur to him to use poison in such a premeditated manner—especially since it would have to include paying a servant to do the work for him.

  Still, Dare needed at least to test whether the sealed bottles were dangerous, and it wasn’t just the open one which might have been tampered with. And then he needed to determine what kind of poison killed vermin and if it was equally dangerous for people. Surely all the research Fowler had done hadn’t killed anyone! The medicine had been available for decades, and the statistics on cures had warranted trying the solution on other diseases.

  Dare almost dropped the lot as he passed the garden wall and saw a light flickering in the glass house. Did they have traveling Gypsies living here, poisoning bugs?

  Remembering he’d found Emilia in there earlier, he cursed and set down the bottles. The crude conservatory had no doubt originally been a storage building, built with sturdy brick walls and small, high windows for light. The late Sir Harry had probably replaced a rotten thatch roof with glass to create a winter house for his plants. It looked like the light of a single lamp shining weakly through the front window.

  He could hear faint hammering. The shed was too damn damp—and vermin infested—for his wife to use. And working outside at night. . . just invited trouble.

  Just in case it wasn’t Emilia, Dare checked the latch and found it open. Trying to see inside without being seen, he nudged the door with his foot until the opening revealed shadows and movement.

  And humming, feminine humming. With a sigh, Dare kicked himself for imagining she had gone off to the parlor to embroider.

  He eased the door open and watched as she stretched an oilcloth over a stick frame she must have created out of nothing. The woman couldn’t cook a meal, but she could make a tent. It was a damned good thing they were living in rural anonymity. She would be a complete waste in a London ballroom.

  “The frame needs crossbars or it will collapse under the weight of the cloth,” he informed her, striding in and checking the posts she’d nailed to the table.

  Instead of shrieking in surprise or yelling at him for intruding, his inimitable wife studied the weak frame and nodded agreement. “I don’t have pieces long enough. And I fear the wood is rotten.”

  “I thought you were creating your laboratory at the abbey,” he said with more irritation than he ought. “It’s dangerous working out here at this hour.”

  She glanced up in surprise. “How? Will the mice eat me? I was wondering if I should sprinkle the leftover solution around the walls to kill bugs, but I was thinking it would be better to have a cat to catch the mice.”

  “Cats kill mice,” he said dryly. “And strangers wander rural roads just as they do city ones. I was thinking of going back for my gun. You are not made of steel, my lady. These are perilous times.”

  “Times are always perilous,” she said in irritation. “I have decided I need a place to work closer to home than the abbey. The abbey is good for practical application of my medicines, and should I ever have a microscope and the proper equipment, I can use the laboratory for studying how and why herbs work. But I also need a place to mix my herbs here. I cannot spend my evenings at the abbey.”

  “You cannot spend your evenings in a shed!” he protested. “You’ve led a truly sheltered life if you think women can wander anywhere a man can and be safe!”

  “I can and I have,” she said stubbornly. “Men keep everything to themselves, so I have to go out and fight for it. If that means walking the streets of London at night, then so be it. Although,” she added with a grimace, “I usually took a footman with me. I just didn’t think one was needed in my own home!”

  Dare gritted his teeth and tried not to shout. “Someone may have tried to poison me. Your mysterious Mr. Crenshaw has robbed you after putting the entire staff out of work. We’ve not been here long enough to know if the villagers blame us or what other resentments might simmer beneath the surface. And vagrants and barn burners and madmen roam the countryside. You cannot be out here at night!”

  “Poison you?” she asked, her eyes widening to mysterious midnight pools. “Your medicine may have poisoned you. I mean to experiment with that. But you cannot make me believe our servants put poison in that bottle!”

  Of course she meant to experiment. Dare closed his eyes and leaned his hip against her makeshift table. It tilted. Cursing, he stood up again. “Come along then, tell me what boxes you need. We’ll both work in the workshop. At least there, I can keep an eye on you.”

  “I don’t want to be kept an eye on,” she said resentfully. “And I don’t wish to be blown up or stink of sulfur.”

  “I plan to experiment on the poison,” he said in desperation, hoping to lure her to safety.

  She wrinkled her nose and eyed him warily. “Just that? What hypothesis are you operating under?”

  The one that says women are too vulnerable to be outside alone, but Dare bit his tongue. Looking around, he found an open crate and hefted it to his shoulder. “Come along. We can work one out together.”

  She hesitated, eyeing him as if he might attack her at any moment. Then with a look of dejection at her leaning tent frame, she began gathering up her few remaining boxes. “I believe your patent medicine consists of a dangerous substance mixed with less toxic ones.”

  “Do you have any notion of how to sort one substance from another?” he demanded, kicking open the door for her.

  “First, I will test it on plants as well as vermin. It is obvious smaller subjects are more prone to die than larger ones. Humans are larger and apparently do not die outright. Is there some mitigating circumstance that might make the medicine useful for humans and fatal to vermin?” She filled her arms with smaller boxes and followed him into the night.

  “You completely dismiss my theory that someone added poison to the bottle?”

  “No, I cannot completely dismiss it, but that is easily tested. You need only pour some liquid from your unsealed bottles into a dish and leave it out overnight.”

  Damn, but the woman was clever—about experimentation, at least.

  About financial affairs, Dare was fairly certain she had no understanding whatsoever. And if he did not find a way of completing the railroad land acquisition, they would be buried in debt by the time he stuck his spoon in the wall.

  He’d finally looked over the survey maps. The tracks could cross abbey lands, or go further south and cross this property. He was fairly certain his wife would adamantly object to selling her family home—but the land part of her trust was in his control. He could do with it as he liked.
/>   Chapter 13

  “Cozy, but not as clean as I would like,” Emilia said in exhaustion as she studied their evening’s handiwork.

  She’d swept out spiders and wasp nests from the walls, and worse from the floors. She was in desperate need of that bath Dare had promised. But he was equally disheveled and coughing hard after dragging together tables, hammering shelves into the walls, and unloading her equipment.

  He pried open the seal on one of his medicine bottles and poured the solution into a shallow plate he set on the floor in a dark corner. “It will be enough tonight to test if the medicine is at fault. Tomorrow, when I have more light, I’ll look at our victims under the microscope.”

  “I cannot say I am sorry to see bugs die,” she said, wiping her hand across her dusty brow. “I am quite certain they are good for plants, but not in the environment I need to make medicine.”

  She checked on the field mouse they’d transferred to a small crate. It had burrowed into a nest of hay they’d given it for a bed. Using a dropper, she added more water to the tiny saucer, then added some cut up carrots from the neglected garden. The mouse stuck its tiny nose out and sniffed. Was it recovered already?

  Dare wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “It’s a mouse, not a pet. It will chew its way out soon enough.” He steered her toward the door. “Medicine-making requires the controlled environment of a laboratory. This shack is little better than your garden shed.”

  “I know, but someday. . .” She sighed. “I am only fooling myself to believe my pharmacopeia will earn even enough to import ginger root to improve your cough medicine.”

  “Publish it under your initials. Men will believe it was written by a man. And yes, I know that’s misogynistic. But not everyone can know you as I do, and you will admit that most women do not have your education.” Dare locked the workshop, and she let him lead her across the stone drive to the back door.

  Even if he didn’t understand, it was a relief to know he didn’t despise her for her unusual occupation. “First, I need the funds to have it printed,” she admitted as they crept into a dark, silent house.

  “That could be a problem. Color plates cannot be inexpensive. But we will worry about it another time. Tonight, we learn what can be done to produce a bath.”

  He started coughing again. Having learned that her desire for this man shielded her from his pain, Emilia wrapped her arm around his waist, enjoying the unfamiliar intimacy. Dare rested his arm over her shoulders as if she might truly be more to him than a means to an end. She’d always had family to keep her from feeling lonely, so she hadn’t realized how much she’d missed by not being held.

  Together, they staggered up the stairs in the illumination of their one lamp.

  “We are very strange newlyweds,” he said as they approached their chamber. “I am sorry that I have not provided a well set-up estate with a full staff for you, but even my own country house is as bad as this. We’ve not lived there in years.”

  “We didn’t plan a real marriage,” she reminded him. She didn’t know what constituted a real marriage, but she was fairly certain theirs lacked the basic foundation of love. “Besides, I’ve never wanted more than what we have here. I love the lectures and libraries in the city, but I’ll never be a social butterfly. Here, I can be eccentric as I like, and as long as we pay the merchants, no one complains. And if Bridey allows me to use the abbey. . . It’s perfect. Or will be,” she amended.

  It would be a solitary life once he was gone, she admitted. Was it wrong to pretend that desolate future wouldn’t happen? Or should she shield herself from caring for this man—whom she already cared about too much. She had never been good at emotional conundrums.

  A single lamp glowed in their shared chamber. Towels and soaps and their robes had been laid out on the bed. A tin tub, scrubbed and shiny, waited in front of a low coal fire. On hooks over the embers hung buckets of water keeping warm. More pitchers of water waited on the washstand.

  “This is almost like being at home,” Emilia exclaimed, giving up her fears of the future for the delight of the moment. “Shall you go first before I use my scented soaps?”

  Foolish question. Even exhausted as he had to be, her handsome husband offered a lascivious smirk and reached for her bodice fastenings. In the firelight his hair glittered like gold, and she was struck by a rush of desire.

  “You will overexert yourself into an early grave,” she tried to warn him, although the other half of her, the animal part that lusted, only half-meant it.

  “Do I prefer quality to quantity of life?” he said in a rough-edged rasp, while releasing her bodice. Even his voice served to excite her. “That’s an old question. At this moment, I choose quality,”

  Quality, Emilia thought later, much later, after they’d soaped and splashed, and she now clung to her husband’s neck and wet hair while he hugged her waist and bottom and pushed deep inside her. Quality should last forever, not be ripped away by the fragility of human flesh.

  Even as the now-familiar quakes shook her, a tear rolled down her cheek.

  It would be devastating to become too attached to this virile, exciting man, only to lose him.

  The next morning, Dare watched his wife dress in old clothes for a day working with her herbs and his medicine—and a sadness wrapped around his heretofore nonexistent heart. Emilia was so dynamic, so brilliant, and so. . . Remembering last night’s lovemaking, he considered simply putting a knife through his heart and dying while still in bliss. Consumption was a vile disease, and he did not want to diminish any of her brilliance with nursing his wasting useless self.

  But he hadn’t fixed the railroad problem or created an heir, so he couldn’t die yet.

  “Are you still feeling nauseated?” she asked, out of the blue, fastening her own bodice without need of her invisible lady’s maid.

  Dare thought about it a second. “I don’t think so. The pain is still there, though. Perhaps I need to break my fast first.”

  She nodded understanding. “I am hoping it is the medicine that is causing the pain. I don’t want to dose you with unnecessary medications until we know.”

  “You are not a trained physician,” he pointed out rudely, needing to put a distance between them. “I’ll travel to Edinburgh and find someone who has actual experience if I must.”

  “Take a written list of my medicinal ingredients for stomach pain and nausea if you go,” she said with a shrug. “See what the experts say.”

  But he could tell he’d hurt her. He felt like an ogre, but it had to be said. It was bad enough that real physicians were poisoning him with proven formulas.

  After they ate, Emilia was the first one out the door. Growling in exasperation, Dare followed her. He unlocked the workshop door, lit a lantern, and let her precede him. The windows hadn’t been washed, and the gloomy day did little to illuminate the interior, but he held the lamp over the dark corner where he’d left the medicine-filled dish.

  Dead bugs littered the dish and the ground around it. If mice had drunk from it, they’d crawled off to die elsewhere. Or recover. He’d have to deliberately poison one in a cage to know how much it took to kill a mouse—Emilia would probably kill him for the suggestion.

  “What the devil is in that stuff?” he asked, lifting the saucer and grimacing at the contents.

  “Bug killer,” she answered pertly. “You have been drinking bug killer.”

  “I’m sure my physician will appreciate that report.” Feeling murderous, Dare lifted a few cockroaches and carried them to his table. “We’ll divide the bottles up. You can try killing weeds, and I’ll see if I can discover what kills bugs.”

  She chortled just a little, although her brow was creased with worry. “Very useful ingredient if it kills everything noxious. I know quite a few plants that are deadly. So far, I’ve not killed any bugs with them.”

  “Give me a list of deadly plants, and if you have any specimens of them, give me those, too. I’ll see if I can develop tests t
o match them against the medicine after I distill the water in it.”

  “Can you not just write Fowler, tell him his medicine kills bugs, and ask what he uses?”

  “I believe he died some years ago, but the physician says the formula is in the latest edition of the pharmacopeia.”

  She sniffed and looked in on her mouse. “The formula is that old? The latest pharmacopeia was reprinted in 1809 and the recipes are positively medieval. I thought you were trying some new kind of solution. I’ll look in grandfather’s ancient library.” She fed her pet vermin more carrots, then lifted her skirt and departed for the house.

  Judging from her tone, Dare concluded he now ranked one rung lower than a cockroach, and he’d definitely better not poison her mouse. It would probably be easier on both of them if they remained at odds and fought attachment—as long as they still shared a bed. He wasn’t about to give up that bit of heaven on earth. Emilia’s quick, inventive mind worked in more places than a laboratory.

  Picking up a dead insect, he calculated the best place to slice, then set up his lamps to examine the parts under a microscope. He’d need a live, unpoisoned bug to compare with.

  Detecting poison was an entirely different field from detecting mineral elements, he feared. He needed more information. But if he’d learned how to identify opioids, surely he could boil medicine down to its essential ingredients.

  Emilia returned with a heavy volume of yellowing pages, dropping it on the table and raising a cloud of dust. Dare coughed, held his nose, and looked up from his microscope. Having a female in his workshop was beyond distracting. The morning light illuminated her face so that it appeared to be translucent porcelain. Her old work gown clung deliciously to slender curves he had come to appreciate, and he had difficulty concentrating on what she was saying.