Chemistry of Magic

by Patricia Rice

  He snorted and flung her against the wall. “If you want it back, you tell that man of yours to call off his fancy lawyers.” He strode out.

  Tess collapsed on the floor in a puddle of petticoats and noisy sobs.

  Seeing servants and even Pascoe running from the main house, Emilia peeled herself off the wall and pointed at the man running down the rear drive. “He hurt Tess and stole my book!”

  Pascoe slowed down. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine. I’ll take care of Tess, just catch the wretch!”

  Given an excuse for action, Pascoe raced for the stable while the servants ran down the drive. Thinking that should do it, Emilia crouched beside Tess. She feared hugging her, but touching only her chin, she gently tilted the girl’s poor bruised face toward the light. Pain leeched off her in such agonizing waves that Emilia could barely maintain her grip.

  “I have some arnica and witch hazel that might help. Did he hurt the babe?” She couldn’t differentiate the pain of the bruise from Tess’s terror and grief, but she released her chin and reluctantly touched the girl’s growing belly. She couldn’t discern anything that indicated danger, although she was fascinated by the stir of life beneath her fingers.

  Realizing she was in danger of being sucked in, she tore her hand away.

  “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” Tess stayed where she was, rocking back and forth with misery.

  “Why would your father want my book?” she asked, because logic calmed her, even if it didn’t help Tess.

  Tess shook her head. “I wanted him to know I was doing good.” She wept harder.

  Emilia tried to puzzle that out but couldn’t. “Is your father an apothecary who can use the recipes?”

  “A physician! He can sell your book.” Tess wrapped her arms around herself and struggled to stop weeping. “I think he has something to do with the railroad,” she whispered in shame.

  A physician? Emilia started to worry, but Tess came first. Surely Pascoe would ride down the young criminal. “Is Mr. Crenshaw the father of your baby?” she asked, knowing she didn’t know how to ask as judiciously as someone like Aster or Bridey might.

  Tess froze, then nodded as color filled her pale cheeks. “He said we’d marry as soon as the railroad made him rich.”

  “And then Sir Pascoe and Lord Dare moved in, and railroad progress halted,” Emilia said, as much to herself as to Tess.

  Tess nodded, gaining a little more confidence. “I told him it didn’t matter. He didn’t need to be wealthy. That he’d find other investments. But he. . . he called me names and walked out, even after I told him about the babe.”

  This time, Emilia did hug the girl. When the hug only brought sharp prickles, she helped Tess to her feet. “You are better off without Mr. Crenshaw, I promise. I’m sorry to say that any man who would strike a woman is a coward and little better than an animal. You could not know that before, but think on it now.”

  “My father hit me when he learned of the babe,” Tess whispered, staggering to her feet, only to collapse in her chair and bury her face in her hands. “It’s all my fault. I knew better. I was raised proper. But Charles was so handsome, and no one hardly ever looks at me and. . .”

  Emilia patted her shoulder. “You’re not the first and certainly won’t be the last to fall for a handsome face. We’re all animals in some ways. It’s our nature. You’ll know better next time and look past his face to see a man who is good to you.”

  Thinking it was a very good thing that they’d married before Dare turned his seductive charms on her, Emilia couldn’t condemn this young girl for falling for kisses and promises.

  She fixed a poultice, using some of the foreign arnica her grandfather had grown after receiving seeds from an herbalist in the Americas. Unlike ginger root, it thrived in his garden now. By the time Tess had a compress held to her bruise, the servants were trickling back—empty-handed.

  Bridey arrived. Emilia looked up hopefully but her friend’s dire expression did not bode well.

  Bridey shook her head in answer to Emilia’s silent question. “I think Tess should go to her room and lie down. We probably ought to fix her some lavender-chamomile tea to help her calm down.”

  Looking shame-faced, Tess was easily persuaded to return to her room while a maid ran to fix the tea. Bridey paced the cell until the girl was out of hearing.

  “What happened?” the baronetess demanded.

  “I could ask the same,” Emilia replied, leaning against her counter. “Did Pascoe not catch up with the brute?”

  “The wretch had a horse waiting outside. By the time Pascoe had his saddled, the thief was long gone. We don’t know the fields and woods here as well as the thief does, apparently. Pascoe sent a groom back to say he’s asking questions along the road toward Harrogate, but capture is not imminent.”

  “We know who he is. We just need to find out where he lives,” Emilia said, not believing it would be that easy but trying to relieve her pregnant friend. “I should return to Dare, tell him that his plans are being threatened.” Emilia explained all she knew from Tess’s halting information.

  Bridey’s fierce expression enhanced her appearance as a red-haired warrior. “But you still have the fair copy, don’t you? We’ll need to take it directly to the duke. He’ll stop anyone else from publishing it.”

  “I think it may be more complicated than that, but I don’t understand how,” Emilia said, crouching down to pick up spilled papers. “Crenshaw used the book as a threat against lawsuits. I need to ask Dare what that means.”

  “Countersuits, probably, or pressing charges against us for practicing medicine without a license, or witchcraft, for all we know. They seem desperate.” Bridey sounded furious as she stooped down to help with the papers.

  “Witchcraft? That’s ridiculous.”

  “I’ve had my own village turn against me on such charges,” Bridey warned. “Once people are afraid, they’ll steer away for no good reason at all. People are not brave. They find safety in numbers and the familiar, and what we are doing is not usual. Once rumors begin, the school may never open.”

  Emilia knew Bridey’s past gave her reason to fear the worst, but she simply couldn’t accept that all their hard work would come to naught because of one brute. She might curl up and die along with Dare if she believed her book was truly lost.

  “I will not believe people are so stupid and cowardly as to hide behind bullies. If so, then we can fight them by being brave.” With the papers gathered, Emilia stood. Her basket had been crushed, so she shuffled the manual into an orderly pile. “And there is nothing of witchcraft in a pharmacopeia. I think they are just desperate. My concern is for poor Tess—to be so used by her father and her lover!”

  “There is your compassion and optimism speaking again. If you’ll use your head, you’ll realize that she is the one responsible for telling people about your book,” Bridey warned. “I do not know if we can trust her again.”

  “I have spent my life writing that book. I will spend the rest of my life defending it, if necessary. We will take her with us to confront her father,” Emilia said, trying to prevent panic but fearing she sounded like an hysteric. “If Crenshaw was telling the truth, that’s where he’ll take the book.”

  “Sommersville first,” Bridey suggested. “Then we will tackle Tess’s father.”

  The yip of hounds ended any planning. William Ives-Madden appeared in the doorway, holding the leashes of straining dogs. “Do you have anything the thief handled?”

  “Besides me and Tess?” Emilia asked, shuddering. “And the book he stole?”

  Mr. Madden was nearly as large as Crenshaw, but his wide chest tapered to a narrow waist and hips, and even though he was dressed in a farmer’s jerkin and leather, he carried himself with the same air of nobility as his relations. He bent her a wry look that hid his concern. “He hit you?”

  “Shoved me.” She pointed at her smashed basket. “I don’t know if straw helps, but he crushed tha
t.”

  She thought he might have growled, or perhaps that was his dogs. He let them sniff the basket, sniff her, and sniff the ground. They took off howling at some silent command, with William fast on their heels.

  “How do they know which smell is which?” Emilia asked, preparing to leave. She needed the comfort and safety of her own four walls. And Dare. How would she tell Dare?

  “I think Will talks to animals much as Pascoe’s son does,” Bridey said. “Who knows what he tells them?”

  “I’m not sure I’ll ever become used to the idea of men having our gifts.” Emilia kneaded her brow. “I don’t suppose we can teach them to write down what they learn in journals?”

  “Doubtful,” Bridey said with a little more cheer. “I think Pascoe smells emotion. Do you think men will even admit that they have moods?”

  Feeling abysmally lonely and wishing Dare might whisper reassuring words of a love he would never feel, Emilia shook her head. “I doubt they even know what emotion is.”

  With that, she packed up to return to her husband, who enjoyed her bed but gave all appearance of forgetting her existence just as every other man she’d ever met did. Was it worth the effort to fight for his attention?

  In the stable yard, seeing Emilia climb from the gig mussed, wide-eyed, and terrified, Dare felt his gut spasm worse than it had full of arsenic. He dropped his paperwork and rushed outside in his shirtsleeves. She threw herself into his arms and clung to him, trembling.

  Fear wrapped his heart. What the deuce could make a woman as head-strong as his wife tremble? He drove his hand into her hair and held her against him. “Who do I have to kill?” he growled. And he meant it. He would throttle whoever had frightened her.

  “They have my book!” she cried.

  He couldn’t tell if she was terrified or furious. Either way, rage bolted through him. Her book? He understood enough to know that from her perspective, they might as well have killed her.

  “They’re threatening us! He hit Tess! I hate this, I hate this, I hate this,” she cried, burying her face in his linen.

  Dare rocked her back and forth, trying to soothe her without having any notion of what she meant or what he was doing. His rational wife did not descend into hysterics for nothing and someone had to pay.

  While the new groom rushed in to tend the pony, Dare led Emilia inside and ordered tea. Mrs. Wiggs took one look at Emilia’s tear-stained face and began snapping orders.

  While Emilia spilled her dreadful story, the housekeeper ran in and out with the tea tray and handkerchiefs, wearing a grim expression. Dare wanted to jump up and beat the threatening coward, but Emilia clung to him, and he couldn’t let her go while she was in this state. Even the tea didn’t settle her as she kept repeating and adding to her story.

  When she finally calmed, Mrs. Wiggs marched in. “Tess is a good girl,” she said stoutly.

  Emilia nodded and wiped at her eyes with a soggy handkerchief. “She was trying to make her father happy for her. It’s not her fault.”

  It damned well sounded like the girl’s fault to him. She’d told her father about Emilia’s book. She’d had no right. But Dare kept his mouth shut, knowing he could do nothing that wasn’t already being done. His inability to gallop about the countryside as he pleased, limiting his options, grated.

  The housekeeper nodded, satisfied. “Her da is my cousin’s son. I’ll give you his name and direction. I never liked the man, and I don’t want that girl anywhere near him, but if Tess can get your book back, I’ll tell her she must do so.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Wiggs,” Dare said, dismissing her. Now that they had some notion of where to find the book, it wasn’t his biggest concern. That anyone would hold his wife’s work as ransom for his behavior irked him, but he didn’t consider it a serious threat. Shoving Emilia, however, required retribution—and it would have to wait. That riled him even more, but his business was more urgent. Beating a coward into mash had to wait.

  He kissed Emilia’s tear-stained cheek, wishing he dared kiss her as she deserved, but he wouldn’t risk her catching his disease. “I must go to Leeds to finalize the railroad documents so we can begin laying track. I’m hoping you will go with me. When we return, we’ll take care of this problem for once and for all. No one is treating you like that and getting away with it. Crenshaw and Tess’s father and anyone else involved will pay.”

  Her eyes were purple pools as she gazed up at him. “I just want my book back,” she whispered. “I don’t want him selling what I’ve spent my life working on!”

  Dare patted her shoulder. “He only has the draft. There isn’t much he can do. Erran can take the original over to Sommersville. Your book is fine. But violence is not. Pascoe and I will handle this.”

  She narrowed her eyes and pulled away. “Did you not just say you were going to Leeds?”

  Dare had a suspicion he’d said something wrong, so he phrased his reply with care. “The investors are meeting there instead of London in deference to my health. I think I can safely take the gig that far without consequences. You can come along to quack me all you like.”

  “When?” she asked, setting her cup down.

  “Tomorrow,” he said warily. “The investors from the northern line are there to finalize the deal. We have everything in place. We need rail to be laid as soon as possible to prevent any more threats to our property or Pascoe’s. We can’t let this ridiculous ransom attempt halt our plans.”

  “I see.” She rose stiffly. “My business, like your health, is of less importance than your investments. I entered this marriage understanding that money must be your priority. I have no right to ask you to change. I don’t think I can accompany you tomorrow. If you’ll excuse me, I have a headache. I think I’ll have my meal sent to my room.”

  Her room? Her room was with him. What the devil did she have to be angry at him for? He hadn’t hit her or stolen her book. He’d told her he’d take care of the bullies when he got back. What more could she possibly want from him? And she was bloody well right that she had no right to ask him to change. He damned well wasn’t dead yet. He’d secure his family’s future, and then he’d think about dying in peace.

  Chapter 19

  Dry-eyed but with a lump in her throat, Emilia watched Dare ride off in the gig the next morning. Theirs wasn’t a real marriage, after all. He had his business and she had hers. Believing they had any sort of partnership just because they enjoyed bedplay was frighteningly weak of her. She had always stood on her own when it came to her work.

  Even though she thought her healing was helping Dare, she also had to accept that she wasn’t a miracle worker. She might keep him alive longer, but some day he would die and leave her alone. She had known that from the start, but these past days of seeing him so healthy had blurred reality.

  The idea of his inevitable death was appallingly shocking now that she knew him so well. Her heart was in danger of breaking if she didn’t find some way of shutting out her feelings. She must maintain her independence and her goals, just as he did his. If it meant the loneliness of sleeping in separate beds as they had last night, so be it.

  Wiping at tears threatening to blind her, she lifted her chin in defiance.

  She would defend what was hers—except he’d taken the gig. She needed a carriage if she was to drive into Harrogate and find Tess’s detestable father. She wanted her book back, even if it was just a draft. Her pages had controversial notions that a man steeped in old-fashioned methods might not accept. That he could change her writing was her worst fear. He could change it, sell the book as his own, and no one would believe that a woman had written it.

  She sent their new footman to the abbey and requested the loan of the berlin. She dressed plainly but formally for her call on Tess’s father. A physician was not a nobleman. He was not even necessarily a wealthy man. She didn’t wish to intimidate with outer trappings, but with conviction and guilt. Once faced with the real owner of the book, he had to see his threat was an emp
ty one.

  The berlin arrived bearing Bridey and Tess. Lord Erran rode along beside it. He swung off the horse and asked for the remaining copy of the finished manuscript. Knowing she could trust Erran to deliver it to the duke, acknowledging that it was no longer safe here, she sent him in to Bessie.

  Emilia was more concerned with the occupants of the carriage. “Bridey, you cannot go with me!” she exclaimed in genuine distress as the footman opened the door. “Neither of you should be out riding in your conditions!”

  “Don’t be silly,” Bridey said dismissively, inching over on the seat to make room for her. “We’re not made of glass. This carriage rides so smoothly, it’s no different from walking. I’m the midwife here, and a better judge than you.”

  But Bridey had miscarried before. Emilia would have nibbled her nail if she hadn’t been wearing gloves. Dealing with people was so much more difficult than plants.

  “If you don’t climb in, we’ll go on without you,” Bridey warned. “I’m having a strong word with Dr. Thomas, and Tess needs to confront him as the woman she has become. He cannot keep treating her as an object to be dragged around at his whim. The man needs correcting.”

  “Where are Pascoe and Mr. Madden?” Emilia asked in resignation, climbing in.

  “They have gone in search of young Crenshaw. But Dr. Thomas must be taught that threatening us is not acceptable.”

  As the former Countess of Carstairs, Bridey had almost single-handedly run a village and large estate. She knew more of these matters than Emilia ever would. If she was to learn to stand on her own, she should take lessons from her friend.

  Taking a deep breath, folding her hands in her lap, Emilia admitted her other concern. “Dare took the gig to Leeds to finalize the railroad negotiations. I fear he will make himself ill, and I won’t be there to help.”

  Guilt ate at her for the decision to allow him to go alone. If he had one of his coughing spells. . . She tried to tell herself he did not have asthma. He would come out of it. She prayed.