A School for Unusual Girls

by Kathleen Baldwin

  “You’re cold.” He chafed my arms, but my chill wasn’t from the brisk air.

  “So short a time. I’m not sure if I can—”

  “You can. You will. We’re very close to an answer.” He cut me off and whipped out a clean kerchief, dabbing at a small abrasion above my elbow. “Look here. You’ve scraped your arm.”

  “It’s nothing.”

  “I’ll decide that,” he said, as if he were so much older and wiser than I. As if I couldn’t tell a gash from a minor cut. Nevertheless, I stood and quietly allowed him to attend to it.

  “These things must be cleaned out to avoid infection. This is what comes of you climbing trees,” he scolded. “There was no need. I made it perfectly clear I would be here to help.”

  “I didn’t think you’d come.” I liked him leaning close to me. I liked the comforting smell of freshly ironed linen on his neck cloth and the inviting scent of honeyed scones on his breath. Only two days, I mourned silently.

  “Widgeon,” he chided, and tied his kerchief around my arm. “I told you I would be here.”

  “You say a great many things, my lord. And I never know which are said in jest and which are serious.” He looked up from bandaging my arm and gave me a singularly confusing grumble.

  Properly bandaged, I headed toward the house. “You will find cheesecloth in a drawer along the back wall,” I said, “for sifting the powder.”

  “Yes,” he responded, matching me stride for stride. “But, Georgiana, tell me something.”

  His pensive tone made me stop. His coat sleeve brushed against my arm. “Back there, under the oak tree, you wanted me to kiss you, didn’t you?”

  “Me?” How dare he ask such a thing? Never mind that it was true. One simply did not ask rude questions like that. “No. Heavens, no. Of course not.” I took off at a bruising pace, barely able to keep from running. Phobos loped happily along beside me, tongue hanging out, oblivious of my embarrassment.

  “My mistake,” he called after me.

  “Yes.”

  Mistake. Mine, apparently, not his.

  My heart slid down into the vicinity of my toes. It felt as if I kicked the poor abused organ with every step I took. Yet, I hurried even faster to get away from him. If I could’ve dashed away without seeming like a shame-faced schoolgirl, I would have. As it was, I scurried ahead of him into the garden, darted up the steps, and called over my shoulder, “I really must hurry. Don’t want to miss breakfast.”

  As if I hadn’t lost my appetite entirely.

  The moment I got through the door, I did run. I took the stairs two by two, up to our dormitorium and collapsed facedown on my bed. If only I could hide there for the rest of the day. Except I wasn’t alone. Tess stood across the room. I groaned, pressed my face into the goose feather coverlet, and yanked a pillow over my head. Even buried under all those feathers, I heard her footsteps as she walked up beside my bed.

  “I saw you in the tree.” She poked my shoulder. “Spying on me.”

  I groaned again, wishing this morning and its wealth of humiliations would go straight to blazes. “I’m sorry,” I said, but my apology was muffled. Shoving the pillow aside I lifted my head. “I am sorry. Truly I am. It was a dastardly thing to do. I didn’t mean to spy on you. Not really. I was in the tree, and … oh, rubbish!” I smacked the pillow. “It just happened.”

  “Never mind.” She exhaled loudly. “Everyone spies on everyone else in this house. No reason why you should be any different than the rest of us. In your case, I suppose it’s only fair. After all, I don’t need to climb a tree to spy on you. I’ve spied on your life more than you have mine.” Tess winced, as if spying on my life saddened and exhausted her.

  “What do you mean?” I sat up. “You’ve seen me in dreams?”

  She nodded.

  A hundred questions popped into my mind. “When? Last night? Before I arrived, or after? What did you see?”

  “Before.” She folded her arms across her chest, shielding herself from my interrogation.

  “I don’t understand. If you’d already seen things about me in dreams, why did you ask Sera what she saw about me?”

  “It’s complicated. I haven’t time. Suffice it to say, Sera sees what is. I see what will be.” Tess turned to walk away. “Or what might be.”

  “Wait.” I sprang off the bed and grabbed her arm. “What did you dream about me? Tell me.”

  She shook my hand off with a warning glare that made me back away. “It isn’t like that. I only see glimpses. A jumble. Flashes. All I can tell you is don’t act in haste today.”

  “Haste?”

  “Yes. Don’t leap out of windows before you’ve thought things through.”

  “You dreamed about that?”

  “About you smashing into a tree. Breaking an arm. The bone splintering.” She grabbed my arm where the old fracture was still tender. “Yes. I lived through that moment with you.”

  No wonder she was ill-tempered. “Not my finest moment,” I said by way of apologizing.

  “But isn’t that what you do, Georgie? Jump before you’ve figured out the tree is too close. Underestimate how fast straw catches fire.” She let go of my arm and pointed her finger at me. “It’s simple. Don’t act in haste. And don’t let Lord Wyatt leave until tomorrow afternoon.”

  I rubbed my arm and watched her head for the door without looking back.

  How could I make Sebastian do anything? I wasn’t his keeper. What was I supposed to do? Tie him in a chair and sic Madame Cho on him. I certainly couldn’t keep him here by any other means. According to him, even the thought of kissing me was a mistake.

  Fortunately, he wouldn’t leave until the ink was done. That wouldn’t be until tomorrow afternoon at the earliest. At the rate we were going, it might be never.

  Tomorrow would be here all too soon.

  Fourteen

  EXPERIMENTING

  I picked at my breakfast, forced myself to swallow a few morsels, and pushed the rest around the plate. After Miss Stranje excused us I slipped quietly into the laboratory. Sebastian was working intently at the table and Madame Cho sat in the corner chair embroidering a long piece of green silk.

  He glanced up from sifting brown powder. “There you are. I thought you’d never get here. The galls are pulverized and almost ready. What solution do you plan to suspend them in?”

  His all-business attitude suited me just fine. I’d made a lifelong habit of focusing on my experiments rather than expecting warmth from the people around me. If that was the way he wanted it, I could do that now without any problem.

  I answered Sebastian in a perfectly calm voice, without a hint of the wild emotions thrashing about in my chest. “Before we know what to put in the gall suspension, I’ll need to finish my calculations and formulate the clear iron ink base.”

  I went straight to work scribbling ratios and mixing a test solution. I didn’t want to take a chance of asphyxiating him again. So this time I stood at the burner, heating the iron salts in a pot of water. I stirred until the minerals began to dissolve. He leaned over my shoulder, watching. I ignored the way his nearness made my skin prickle and tingle just as it does before a lightning storm. I also ignored his low rumbling murmurs of approval when the mixture began to boil. I paid no attention when his arm brushed against mine as he reached around me to adjust the burner. Although, he really ought to have asked me first. Never mind that the heat needed a reduction, I was in charge here. This was my domain. He ought not to think he could anticipate my needs.

  When he tucked a piece of my hair behind my ear, it was outside of enough. He had no right to touch my person in such an intimate way. He was my assistant, not my brother, and certainly not my lover. He’d made that abundantly clear this morning. “Don’t,” I snapped.

  “It was in your way,” he said matter-of-factly.

  “I’ve grown accustomed to looking through my hair. Must you stand so close?”

  “Would you have me miss the most interesting
part of the experiment?”

  I exhaled my irritation. “No. I suppose not. But I would prefer if you stood beside me, instead of breathing down my neck. It feels as if you are a great hulking giant about to thump me should I do anything amiss.”

  “What an odd thing to say.” He sounded genuinely surprised, almost offended. Still he didn’t budge from leaning over my shoulder. In fact, his breath tickled even more, warming the sensitive skin just below my earlobe. “Young ladies have never complained about it before.”

  “Young ladies enjoy you breathing down their necks, do they?” The stupid question popped out before I’d thought it through. I cringed the minute it escaped my lips.

  “Prodigiously,” he said into my neck.

  I couldn’t stop the shiver it caused. “You know what I meant.”

  He stood so close, that I felt his soundless chuckle through the slight vibration of his chest against my shoulders.

  Madame Cho, our vigilant chaperone, cleared her throat pointedly.

  He backed away slightly. “I assure you, it’s true. I’ve done the research. You appear to be the only female in all of Christendom able to resist my charms.” He’d said it in jest, and yet I realized the depressing truth—there were bound to be scores of women in love with him, beautiful women, seductive women, like Lady Daneska.

  I stared at the bubbling mixture, scowling. “I suppose you left London littered with broken hearts.” I’d tried to sound glib, sophisticated, witty, maybe even a little bit flirtatious. Stupid, stupid girl. No sooner had I said it than I wanted to smack my mouth, because I most certainly did not want to hear about his conquests.

  “No.” He moved to my side and shook his head solemnly. “No broken hearts in London on my account.” He rubbed his jaw, stroking freshly shaved whiskers, arousing the scent of his shaving soap into the air between us. “Mind you,” he added, “the continent is an entirely different matter.”

  I had the oddest reaction. I wanted to sock him in the belly, or slap that cocky smirk off his face. Either way, it is lucky for him that I had to keep stirring.

  “Look.” He pointed at the mixture. “It’s getting more transparent.”

  I’d been staring at the iron salt solution but not seeing it at all. It did look somewhat clearer, but still retained a greenish yellow tint. He leaned close and, I am embarrassed to report, I studied the color of his skin and the way his dark hair curled around his earlobe, rather than the murky liquid in the pot.

  “Uh-oh,” he said, and jerked back. “It’s turning brown. What’s happening?”

  “Drat!” I grabbed a cloth, pulled the vessel from the heat and stared at the now reddish brown contents. “I let it go too long. We’ll have to start again.”

  He tossed the contents out the window and I started the measuring process again. This time I watched the mixture more carefully as we heated it. Once more it failed to stay transparent.

  “Sulfur,” I suggested. “We should try a dash of sulfur.”

  We did, and it seemed to work. Until, at the last minute, it turned a disheartening ochre color. Next, we tried potash and hypothesized that if we kept the temperature exactly right we might succeed. No. Again and again, we tried. And so it went, until the day stretched long, and we were both rubbing at our temples in frustration.

  When the light outside our window waned from widow’s gray to funeral black, Sebastian lit a candelabra. A footman brought us a platter of meats, cheese, bread, and fruit. I grabbed my notes and tucked up on a bench along the wall. There had to be an answer somewhere. Sebastian flipped the Persian textbook open on the tabletop and leaned over it, dragging his fingers through his hair as he searched for an answer. “We’re so close.” He thumped the table. “It only needs a small push and we’ll have it.”

  He was right, but I knew from experience that finding a solution as complex as this had been known to elude scientists for years, even decades. That troubling thought made me thumb through my notes even more frantically. I stopped on a set of papers with numerous scribbled-out passages. A few months ago I’d experienced a great deal of frustration because the Persians were so inconsistent in identifying their ingredients. For instance, they might call iron salts: green vitriol, copperas, and or even alum. They used these names interchangeably, despite the fact that there are notable differences between those substances.

  I shoved a mass of unruly red curls back from my face and stared at the flickering candles. “We can’t be certain exactly what the Persians meant by copperas.”

  He tossed me an apple. “It has to be iron salts, because we know they react with gallotannin to make ink.”

  I shrugged and bit into the apple, the sweet juices invigorated me. I squinted at a note I’d previously scratched out. Hope flared. Except we’d had so many missteps that day, I dreaded another wrong turn. I barely offered the suggestion aloud. “Ammonium.”

  He glanced up, like a hound alerting on a scent. “Did you say something?”

  “What if we add ammonium? To minimize oxidation.” I struggled to read the scratched out note. “Two months ago I wrote a note that says ammonium applied to copperas produces blue crystals and leaves behind a white fluid. White might dry close enough to clear.”

  “Worth a try.” He clapped his hands together, invigorated by the possibility. “I’ll mix,” he offered. “You keep reading. You might run across something else we should try.”

  “Very low heat, I should think.” I didn’t know if he heard me or not.

  He nodded, absently opening storage drawers, hunting for ammonium, measuring water and iron salts. I leaned my head against the wall and watched him work while I finished off the last of my apple.

  Sebastian was as much a riddle to me as invisible ink. An insufferable devil one minute and a brooding angel the next. The man jested mercilessly, and yet I knew he hid a dark wound in his heart. I couldn’t imagine how a child could bear seeing his own father killed so brutally. But he cloaked his grief so effectively that, except on rare occasions, it seemed almost as if the tragedy had never occurred. He didn’t behave like an injured animal. He wasn’t brooding and angry like Lord Ravencross. What was it in Sebastian’s makeup that allowed him to survive and even thrive, despite a scarring childhood? I concluded that Captain Grey must have been an extraordinary guardian.

  I sighed, watching him work. One thing I knew for certain, the man was too striking in appearance for his own good.

  He hummed softly as he poured ingredients. “Read.” He pointed the measuring spoon at the papers in my lap. “You can gaze adoringly at me another time.”

  I jerked upright. “I was doing no such thing.”

  Madame Cho grunted, an eerie sound that almost resembled a chuckle. Sebastian simply raised one eyebrow at a jaunty angle.

  “I wasn’t gazing at you, adoringly or otherwise.” I sniffed and bent over my notes. “Be sure to keep the heat low.”

  “Aye, aye, General.”

  “You may as well leave the window open. The ammonium is going to stink.” Barking orders made me feel in control again. “And for pity’s sake, if it does start to smoke remove it from the burner right away. I’m too tired tonight to drag your enormous carcass out of here again.”

  “Enormous, I am not enormous,” he muttered, tapping the copperas out of the measuring spoon onto the scale. He stopped and squinted at me, a picture of concern. “But now that you mention it, you are looking a bit peaked. Perhaps it’s time you toddled off to bed with the rest of the youngsters.”

  “I’ll not toddle anywhere. This is my laboratory and I won’t be dismissed.” I flipped to a new page and pretended to be deeply engrossed in my old notes. “Aside from that, I am not a child.” The minute I said it I realized it sounded exactly that, childish.

  “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”

  “Shakespeare. How droll.” I sighed and tsked, trying to sound as if I was above all his nonsense. “If you must know, my lord, I am sixteen. An adult.” Old enough to h
ave a season in London. Old enough to be shipped off to Stranje House and abandoned to the care of strangers. For that matter, old enough to marry. Several girls in my village had married at fifteen. Not that it was of any importance. I swallowed and caught the corner of my lip between my teeth. Because, of course, I would never marry.

  “Sixteen?” He set down the measuring spoon and studied me speculatively. “That old?” He smirked as if it was all a big joke. I hated him for that.

  “Yes, that old.” I turned away from the burning look in his eyes, which was probably nothing more than candlelight reflecting off his pupils. “Perhaps it is you, my lord, who ought to toddle off to bed. I know how much you elderly folk value your rest.”

  Without so much as a smile at my jibe, he asked flatly, “How much ammonium?”

  I checked my notes. “One dram, I should think. If that doesn’t work, we can add more later.”

  He concentrated on measuring. I skimmed through more pages cataloging past experiments, analyzing my failed recipes, searching for something I might have missed, some glimmer of hope. Why wouldn’t the solution turn clear?

  I was so absorbed in scouring my notes, I didn’t notice Miss Stranje enter the room. “I take it you have not found the answer yet?”

  Immediately, I swung my feet off the bench and corrected my posture. Even though Madame Cho had been sitting in the corner all day, she so seldom looked up from her stitching, that I’d relaxed and lowered my guard. I glanced at the old dragon’s straight-backed chair and was shocked to see she had left her post. I must have been more absorbed in reading than I’d thought. “No. No answer yet.”

  “A pity.” Miss Stranje sniffed stoically. “Unfortunately, you must put aside your work until tomorrow. Past time you went to bed, Georgiana.”

  I expected Sebastian to smirk at that, but he didn’t. He stirred the ammonium and iron and frowned. He must’ve been thinking the same thing I was.

  “We have so little time,” I explained. “Less than two days.”