Excitement rippled through the crowd. The assembly made its way down the room to converge in front of the curtained dais.
Aidan stepped between Laurel and the countess and offered an arm to each of them. “Ladies, shall we?”
That forced Lord Munster to follow, his cheeks sucked into the sides of his mouth in a clear display of petulance.
“Fitz, old boy,” Aidan said, his mood suddenly improved, “you never did explain how you achieved a place on Rousseau’s list.”
“One must show enthusiasm for the project,” Lady Fairmont answered before Lord Munster had the chance. “And lend one’s support.”
Laurel felt Aidan’s response immediately in the bunching of the muscles inside his sleeve. Interesting, she thought. The reaction, though perhaps merely an involuntary movement, hinted at a more than cursory interest in Rousseau and his elixir.
“And how might one do that?” he asked.
Did the others hear the subtle derision roughening the otherwise velvet glide of his voice?
Lord Munster fidgeted with his neckcloth. “By making a n-nominal investment. Can’t expect the man to f-fund his experiments out of thin air, after all.”
“You never mentioned this.”
“Didn’t think you’d b-be interested.”
Aidan didn’t challenge the claim, but in the jut of his chin and the crease in his brow, Laurel perceived his ruminations. As they reached the gathering at the dais, he rounded on Lady Fairmont. “And you’ve given the man money as well?”
“Dearest, do not look like that. I offered a trifle, merely. Monsieur Rousseau’s daily needs are few, and as Lord Munster said, he cannot be expected to work and live on nothing. But hush now! The curtain is opening.”
Attendants stationed on either side of the dais tugged the drapery cords, drawing the black curtains in a dramatic sweep to reveal a table stacked with a dazzling array of glassware. A maze of copper tubing connected narrow glass cylinders with beakers, funnels, and flasks, the apparatus extending some two feet into the air. At one end of the table, an assortment of jars and bottles was clustered beside a mortar and pestle. At the other end was what appeared to be a punch bowl, only fashioned from the same pale stone as many of Bath’s buildings.
At the center of the table, a bracketed pole held one end of copper tubing suspended above a cauldron that rested on an odd sort of brazier. Made of brass, the heater’s half of a round belly was perched on four curved legs, its bowl glowing brightly. What drew Laurel’s curiosity, however, were the crank and gears attached to the brazier, and the metal coils that spiraled out from the burning core to connect with the cauldron itself.
Standing behind this peculiar display was an individual of such modest stature that Laurel had at first overlooked him. A receding hairline emphasized a dome of a forehead that dwarfed the rest of his features, except for his eyes. From behind a pair of thick spectacles, his black eyes seemed to float disembodied from his face, staring out at the audience with a disconcertingly unfocused look.
His ill-fitting coat of shabby tweed momentarily won Laurel’s sympathies, until she remembered his background—his father’s unspeakable crimes during the wars—and his own potential threat to Victoria. Until she discovered the truth of Claude Rousseau’s intentions, she must not let herself be swayed by appearances. Like her, he could be playing a part designed to deceive.
All around her, the audience applauded, all except Aidan, whose expression had turned stony.
“Welcome, and thank you for coming,” Claude Rousseau said. Despite his myopic appearance, his strong voice carried through the room. As he launched into an explanation of his elixir, his light French accent became apparent.
“The ultimate goal of alchemy is to unlock the mysteries of transformation within every individual, bringing their unique life rhythms into resonance with the universal forces of the natural world and thus promote a longer, more rewarding, and disease-free life.”
He gave the crank on the brazier half a turn, sending the gears for a quick spin. The coils glowed brilliant orange, and steam spurted from the cauldron. “My elixir, as you will see, is designed to purify the imbalances which occur within the body and the mind, thereby bringing the physical, cognitive, and philosophical elements of being into a state of harmony and clarity.”
“Good Christ,” Aidan swore under his breath.
In contrast, Lord Munster looked on eagerly, echoing the audience’s murmurs of appreciation and gasps of surprise, depending on the turn Rousseau’s narrative took.
“My research, spanning the ancient writings of such men as Jabir ibn Hayyan, Wei Boyang, Albertus Magnus, and England’s own Roger Bacon, has led me here, to this grand city, where the Romans once came to cure their ills.”
He gestured to the stone font. “Through my excavations, I have discovered a source of thermal waters far purer than those that flow from the fountain in this room, or that fill the city’s bathhouses.” He drew his fingertips across the surface of the liquid in the font. “This water has not been contaminated by traveling through ancient rubble and piping. It has been siphoned directly from the natural springs that flow beneath Bath via the majestic hills to the north of us.”
“Where is this source of your water?” a man in the crowd called out.
Rousseau smiled like a cat with its whiskers in the cream. “That, sir, is the strictest secret. For, you see, my laboratory is located deep beneath the city, below the sacred chambers of the Roman goddess Minerva. To reveal the location would not only jeopardize my research but also expose others to the dangers of possible subterranean collapse. I alone will risk the hazards, but you shall all reap the benefits.”
Appreciative murmurs fanned through the assembly until Rousseau once more called for their attention.
He selected a beaker and dipped it into the font, filling it and then pouring the cloudy water into the flask perched highest on his scaffolding of copper tubing. Next, he opened several earthenware containers, took a pinch or two from each, and ground the mixture with the pestle. The scraping sound set Laurel’s teeth on edge.
Next, selecting a slender bottle, he poured a thin stream of amber liquid into the ingredients he had just crushed. “This, ladies and gentleman, is a fusion containing tincture of purple coneflower, a powerful curative used for centuries by the native peoples of the Americas.” He added this to the water in the elevated flask.
Rousseau turned a knob and the mixture vanished, only to reappear and disappear several more times as the tubing brought it in and out of the various containers. The man added more water and tincture at intervals. Finally, the liquid splashed into the cauldron. With another turn of the crank, the brazier sizzled and the coils lit up. The contents of the cauldron began to bubble.
Laurel wrinkled her nose. “Such a dreadful odor.”
“Like rotting eggs with a touch of seasoning,” said Melinda.
“And perhaps no more worthwhile,” Aidan mumbled. He shifted impatiently, and for a moment Laurel thought he would stride away.
“You seem rather vexed, Lord Barensforth.” With a slant of her chin, she issued a challenge. “Are you afraid to stay and listen? Afraid Monsieur Rousseau might curb your skepticism?”
“He is by n-nature a skeptic,” the Earl of Munster whispered. “A leopard who c-cannot change his spots.”
Laurel doubted that. If anything, she suspected Aidan Phillips of being a master of deception, a man capable of assuming a vast array of personae as the situation warranted. Yet like the leopard, he seemed to her a sleek and cunning hunter, one that moved through the shadows with precision and stealth to seduce his unwitting prey.
Had she let herself become his inadvertent quarry last night?
He appeared not to have heard his friend’s comment, or perhaps he chose to ignore it. “I’ve no intention of going anywhere, Mrs. Sanderson.” His cool smile caused her nape to prickle. “I wouldn’t miss this demonstration for the world.”
Lady Fairmont
gently shushed him.
“The formula is almost ready,” Rousseau declared, peering down into his steaming, gurgling mixture. “But not quite.”
Selecting three vials, he removed the stoppers. He held one up. “Now for the strengthening properties. First, the quickness of mercury.” He added a drop of a shining substance to the formula. “Then . . . the luster of silver.” Tilting a second vial, he gave it a tap, sprinkling in tiny gleaming flecks. He held up the third vial. “Lastly, the shimmering warmth of pure gold—the most precious of alchemical elements.”
The audience heaved murmurs of appreciation.
Aidan’s scowls deepened.
Laurel experienced doubts of her own. “Can ingesting metals truly improve one’s health?”
“Indeed, Mrs. Sanderson. The c-confluence of alchemical principles with herbal medicines boosts the benefits of the m-mineral waters,” Lord Munster explained with an air of self- importance. Several people standing nearby overheard and nodded, as though they had all been well versed in Rousseau’s process.
She strained on her tiptoes to see into the cauldron. The water had turned a curious pale mossy shade. Tiny specks flashed as they caught the light.
Aidan whispered in her ear, “You aren’t putting stock in any of this, are you?”
Everything about his manner said she would be a fool to believe Rousseau’s claims. She shrugged. “I neither believe nor disbelieve. But I am willing to be persuaded by the evidence of a positive outcome.”
A team of waiters carried in trays of glasses already filled with the elixir. Apparently Rousseau’s demonstration was exactly that, designed merely to illustrate how he prepared his formula.
“Will it cure indigestion?” came a query from somewhere to Laurel’s right.
“What of my chest pains?”
“Headaches? I suffer dreadfully from migraines.”
“I’d give half my fortune to ease my rheumatism.”
Rousseau patiently addressed each query. “And now, ladies and gentlemen, please form a queue if you wish to sample my elixir. So small an amount cannot cure your ills, but you should feel remarkably invigorated.”
Within minutes, those at the head of the line began to exclaim their delight with the elixir’s effects. Smiles broke out, followed by laughter and cries of astonishment.
“Good heavens, I do believe the fellow is on to something!”
“Did I not tell you as much?”
Lady Fairmont and Lady Devonlea stood before the dais, each being handed a sample. Curiosity overcoming even her aversion to the acrid odor, Laurel moved to take a place in line.
Aidan seized her wrist and turned her about. Behind the clear blue of his eyes, white- hot anger flared. She flinched at his intensity, instantly convinced that, whatever his objections, they had not arisen merely from today’s demonstration. His ire seemed the result of a much older, more deeply rooted apprehension.
He leaned close, his warm breath like a streak of fire across her cheek. “Don’t.”
That was all he said—don’t—too low to be heard by anyone except her, but emphatic, razor sharp.
“Please unhand me, Lord Barensforth.” Despite the alarm etched on her face, the widow spoke with composure. Her lashes swept shadows over her flushed cheeks as her gaze lit on the hand he held clamped around her wrist. “You are hurting me.”
He barely heard her through the pounding in his ears. It was all too familiar, Rousseau with his tinctures and procedures and promises. Empty, perhaps even dangerous promises, all too reminiscent of his mother’s death, his father’s despair.
Laurel gave a tug that thrust him back to the present. The fingers wrapped about her wrist trembled with tension and anger. He released her, fisting the hand even as he muttered an apology.
Her lips tightened, likely from holding back the reprimand he deserved. She only said, “That is quite all right. Excuse me.”
She started to walk toward the dais, where the waiters continued to pass around Rousseau’s mystery elixir—a mystery because Aidan was not so naive as to believe the man had just divulged the secrets of his patented formula.
Ah, Rousseau was skillful, damn him. For all his humble and myopic appearance, he possessed a practiced flair for the dramatic. This rubbish about secret laboratories and ancient temples lent just the right aura of mysticism to delight the gullible.
Was Laurel one of them?
He reached out, tempted to catch her shoulder from behind, until he realized he’d exhibited enough inappropriate behavior for one day simply in seizing her wrist. It wasn’t as though they were alone on a night-darkened balcony. Here, people would talk.
“Laurel.” He hissed her name, and like an arrow the summons hit its mark. She halted and turned. “I’d still rather you didn’t.”
Her head tilted; the dimple beside her mouth flashed as her lips plumped. “Why?”
How should he answer? What proof did he have that Rousseau was attempting to swindle anyone, or that his elixir might not actually possess a benefit or two? As Wescott had said at the outset, medical advances were made in this manner.
But so were bankrupt estates and broken hearts. “It is too new. Who can say whether his formula might cause an adverse reaction?”
He half expected her to demand why he should care what she did. He demanded that of himself and didn’t like the answer: that after a single waltz beneath the stars, this perplexing woman had begun to matter to him. That he had begun to care about her.
“No one else seems unduly concerned.” Her gloved hand made a sweep of the line extending out from the dais. Aidan saw the familiar faces of Julian Stoddard, the recently arrived Lord and Lady Harcourt, even the doubtful Geoffrey Taft and Mrs. Whitfield, and a host of others awaiting their turn. “Frankly,” she said, “I do not see the harm.”
“Then you are as biddable as the rest of these bleating sheep.”
Her breath came sharply, but she held her ground. “That is rather harsh, don’t you think? Look there, Lady Fairmont and Lady Devonlea are about to enjoy a taste. I see Lord Munster up ahead as well.”
With that, she stalked away, and he let her, raking a hand through his hair and expelling an oath through his teeth. Yes, his friends and acquaintances were in line to ingest a hodgepodge of God only knew what. And the truth was, while he didn’t relish the thought of these people risking their health, he had not come here to stop them. He hadn’t come this morning intending to prevent anything, but rather to scrutinize the demonstration, search out inconsistencies, and sample the elixir himself. How else to determine the truth of its effects?
A sound plan. Yet what had he ended up observing? Laurel Sanderson. What had he sampled? The spark of her gutsy valor as she stood up to him time and again.
Was she the woman from Knightsbridge Street? He knew she was. Then why did she have him half disbelieving his own certainty?
Because she had somehow engaged his emotions in ways other women did not, leaving him open, susceptible, distracted—
His thoughts broke off. His mind went utterly still, then began sifting through everything he knew about flimflam artists.
They often had partners, planted among the potential targets to act as . . .
Distractions. To draw attention away from the trickery of the scheme, and to provide seemingly innocent encouragement to those clinging to their skepticism.
Is that why the lovely and engaging Mrs. Sanderson had suddenly appeared on Bath’s social scene? How convenient that she should arrive only days before Rousseau offered his elixir to the general public.
Aidan shook his head at the unlikely stride his logic had taken. Yes, he believed she had lied about being in mourning and, yes, he believed she continued to hide . . . something. But being in collusion with a man who happened to be a respected member of his profession, who had never committed so much as a misdemeanor in all his years in this country?
When he thought of it that way, his suspicions seemed ridiculous. Yet suspicion
continued to creep along his nerve endings, raising an irritable itch between his shoulders.
In the past few minutes, the line had grown considerably shorter while the chorus of voices praising the formula filled the room. Fitz reached to accept two glasses from a waiter. He handed one to Laurel. Nearby, Melinda and Beatrice were sipping theirs.
Aidan moved to the dais. “I say, can a bloke procure himself a dram?”
Laurel’s glass paused partway to her lips. “But you said . . .” She trailed off, eyebrows angling inward. “You were dead set against it,” she charged. “You implied there might be . . . danger.”
“Did I? How dramatic. Mrs. Sanderson, you must have misunderstood me. Odd how our perceptions can sometimes confound us.” He winked, wagering that she would have no trouble comprehending the gesture.
Her indignation held another instant, then dissolved into a moue of capitulation. She had read his meaning perfectly. If she said nothing more about his objections to Rousseau’s elixir, he would not bring up London again.
However much their individual intentions might conflict, for now it seemed the very act of harboring secrets had rendered them unwitting accomplices. The notion should not have made him grin, but grin he did as he clinked his glass against hers and prepared to take his first taste of Rousseau’s magical elixir.
Laurel wanted to shake the grin from Aidan Phillips’s lips and the glass from his hand. Why put up such a fuss about not sampling the formula if he had intended trying it all along? The man was impossible. Was he deliberately trying to exasperate her?
He was doing a first-rate job.
And his reference to “confounded perceptions” could not have been any plainer. Tit for tat. Blackmail, really. Either she stopped questioning his sudden change of mind, or he would harass her about the color of her dresses and whether she had nearly been trampled in a crowd last summer.
Blast the man and his inconvenient memories. Thank heaven Lord Munster had been too far away that day to have gotten a good look at her.
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