Chemistry of Magic

by Patricia Rice

  Once he closed his eyes, she found the latest scientific journal she’d been reading, removed her gloves, and settled into her corner. She had considered changing into a travel gown rather than cover her wedding gown in road dust, but had decided being cool was more important. Besides, this first part of the journey was along well paved roads, and would merely take them a distance outside the city. Tomorrow would be more daunting.

  Despite her immense concentration, she couldn’t read. The big man beside her seemed to fall almost comatose. She had to keep checking to see if he breathed. Did she dare. . . ?

  She contemplated the rise and fall of her husband’s shirt front. He’d managed to unfasten coat and waistcoat again. The man obviously did not like confinement. His neckcloth was still loosely tied but fell to one side. Did she dare. . . ?

  She’d used her gift on him earlier. She thought it had helped. At the time, her fear and nervousness had made it easier to detach the physical connection that her gift demanded. Healing was far more difficult with children, when every instinct demanded that she cure them, to her own detriment.

  She didn’t mind suffering with her patient if she knew she was healing him. The real problem was when she didn’t let go in time. She hadn’t fully tested her abilities when she connected with a patient, but the problem seemed to be that the healing itself deprived her of the life energy she needed to breathe.

  Herbs were far safer.

  She wasn’t foolish enough to believe she could cure consumption, of course, but if she could prove to herself that she actually helped. . .

  She either tried now or must give up all hope of ever using her daunting gift. Delicately, she laid her fingers on Dare’s shirtfront. He didn’t stir.

  With a little more confidence, she flattened her palm against a hard wall of muscle. Her new husband was a tall man, well-built, but lean. She wished she dared open his shirt, but that was a step she couldn’t take. Instead, she focused on his breathing, the way his lungs moved beneath her hand, the harsh raking of air against damaged tissue. . . Prickles crept up her arm, forming a raging current straight to her own lungs, creating a deep angry ache. . .

  She lost herself in the energy, the exchange of pain and heat. If only she knew more. . .

  He jolted awake, sitting up with a start. “What the—?”

  Startled, Emilia yanked back her hand. Trembling at how far she’d gone, she pretended nothing had happened. Weak and not a little dizzy, she flipped a page of her journal. “You’re awake. Did the nap help?”

  Healing always drained her. She ached in all the places he must, and she still had no means of knowing if she’d helped.

  Dare rubbed absently at his chest and peered around the window curtains. “I’ve been better. We should be arriving before long. I’m a bit peckish for a change. I don’t think you ate much of the wedding breakfast. Shall we dine early?”

  Emilia hid a smile of triumph. If he was hungry, she’d helped heal him a little, she was sure—because her gift drained her, and she was now exhausted and had no interest whatsoever in food.

  Chapter 3

  Dare was disgusted with himself for sleeping through the hours he’d thought to use seducing his bride. Climbing out of the coach, reinvigorated from his nap, he watched his calm and collected wife stand to one side while servants clambered and bustled about, handling the luggage and horses. She’d donned her hat again, so he couldn’t read her eyes.

  Despite the heat, the dust, and the sweltering journey, she appeared detached from her surroundings. She clung to the heavy valise she’d insisted on removing from beneath the plank under his mattress. Books, she had said. She was taking books to their bridal chamber.

  He didn’t even know what to call her. The formality of Lady Dare didn’t suit her—that was his mother, devil take it. But they had scarcely reached the intimacy of using her given name either.

  She took his arm when he offered, dipping her blasted hat in acknowledgment of his support. Only when he led her to the stairs in the innkeeper’s wake did Dare realize she clutched his arm as if he were her anchor. Did the night ahead make her that nervous? He regretted having to release her when she lifted her skirt to follow in single file up the narrow stairs.

  The inn had been chosen because it catered to aristocratic clientele, and their room had been arranged in advance. Their host led them to a large chamber with a wide bed and a small dining table. A door connected to a smaller room with two cot-sized beds, for children and servants—or a reluctant bride.

  “Would you prefer to rest before dinner?” Dare asked, discarding his hat as the last of the servants departed. He regarded his seemingly composed bride with fascination.

  She removed the garden of roses on her head. Rays from the setting sun accented ebony tresses with an almost blue-black sheen. A lovely hint of pink colored her high cheek bones.

  “If you would not mind. . .” She hesitated.

  “Let us understand each other from the start,” he said impatiently. “I will not fall into a sulk if you do not wish to do what I want. I will not strike you if you outright object. I will not break if you have a better idea. I am impatient, irascible, and tediously single-minded, but I still manage to be a gentleman. I have only a short time left in this world to learn your preferences. Speak your thoughts without fear.”

  Without her hat in the way, he could see the weariness of her reluctant smile. “Then I should like nothing more than to wash and lie down, please. I will leave you to the larger bed. I believe the wagon with our servants and the rest of our baggage means to continue further down the road to arrive ahead of us. If I need aid, I’ll call on an inn maid. Thank you for understanding.”

  Dare wanted to roar objection. All week he’d been planning for this evening! Admittedly, the inability to kiss her had a hampering effect, but he must have some kind of mental deficiency to let her escape without so much as a hug or semblance of regard. He could argue that the servants would gossip about their lack of conjugal rapport. . . but he had stupidly promised that she could have whatever she liked.

  He would be an outright cad to object after she had seen to his comfort on their journey. The irony was that she had been right. He now felt invigorated enough to have the wedding night he’d planned. Tomorrow, he might not be able to say the same.

  It was a delicate situation, but one he hoped he could manage with some degree of finesse. After all, he’d dealt with his all-female family for years without having them take off his head.

  Clenching his jaw against protest, Dare bowed. “Your wish is my command, my lady.”

  She nodded, picked up her satchel, and slipped into the smaller room, closing the door behind her.

  Now what the devil did he do with himself and all the restless energy he’d never been able to contain until he’d been struck down by disease?

  Not daring to take a bracing ride across the countryside and risk stirring his cough, he stomped down to the tavern to look for food and a good card game to join.

  Emilia was perfectly capable of removing her own clothes. Her modiste understood her needs and designed everything to perfection so no other person need touch her. It helped that she was so skinny that she really didn’t need much of a corset. Her life had become much simpler once she’d dispensed with busybody servants tattling about the hours and company she kept.

  She hung her lovely wedding gown on a hook and covered it with her gossamer hat. She untied the laces of her corset and shimmied out of it. She hadn’t suffered this exhaustion since she’d tried to save her infant sister from a severe asthma attack and had almost died herself. Caution had come not just with age, but with genuine fear of dying.

  She tucked her precious satchel into the wardrobe. Wearing her shift, she slipped between the covers, listening as her new husband let himself out of the room next door. She couldn’t regret that he seemed healthier for her exertions.

  But lying awake, wondering what a vigorous man like Devil Dare might be doing in an i
nn full of temptation, she had to admit to conflicting emotions. She had planned this marriage thinking they’d each go their separate ways—but she’d rather thought his way would be lying helplessly in bed. Foolish of her, she realized now.

  She had known from an early age that marriage and carnal relations would never be for one with her unpredictable gift. A dying man had appeared to be an ideal solution. . . unless her need to heal him killed her first.

  Lord Dare seemed like a reasonable man. Perhaps she could explain her dilemma about touching and pain. Tomorrow. Or after they reached Harrogate. Sometime soon, when she was certain he wouldn’t scorn her. Secure with that decision, she dozed.

  She heard him return sometime later. The room was dark, but she didn’t know the hour. He bumped against furniture—looking for the lamp? She couldn’t decide whether to be fascinated with this new aspect of her life or frightened.

  He started coughing at the same time as she realized she’d missed dinner and was hungry. Normally, she would call for Bessie, who was more companion than maid. But the servants had gone ahead to prepare the house for their arrival while the newlyweds were theoretically. . . newly-wedding.

  She got up, lit a lamp, and pulled a robe from her valise. Wrapping it around her, she rummaged for more horehound. She wished she had a better palliative, but opium was a final stage option. As her new husband cursed, fumbled around, and coughed in the other room, she summoned her courage.

  She heard him groan and cast up his accounts, and she panicked. Was he drunk?

  How could she have forgotten that he was known as Devil Dare? A pleasant afternoon while he napped, a few brief conversations, and she thought he’d changed?

  Should she pretend she didn’t hear him? Except, he was ill. She was constitutionally incapable of ignoring the ill.

  Knocking briskly on the connecting door, she opened it without waiting for him to reply. The hot August heat made the room uncomfortable. He’d lit a lamp, so she could see to cross the room. He splashed water in the basin behind the dressing screen while she opened the window to let in what small breeze there was.

  Dare emerged dressed only in shirtsleeves and trousers, looking a little pale but not drunk. She swallowed hard at all that broad male chest covered only in thin linen. Her husband was amazingly muscular for an ill man. And she shouldn’t be studying his physique.

  Silently, she handed him the horehound. He grimaced and rummaged in the drawer in the stand beside the bed, producing a bottle. Thinking he was taking his mineral water, Emilia waited. Only when he’d swigged and coughed some more did she see the label.

  She grabbed it before he could return it to the drawer. “Fowler’s Solution?” She carried the bottle closer to the lamp to read the label. “It says nothing of the contents. Do you have any idea what is in this?”

  He snatched the bag of horehound from her hand and helped himself to one. With the cough under control, he began to breathe without the frightening choking sound. “I told you, my physician recommended that I test it.”

  “You’ve said yourself that you need more subjects before a test is a true experiment. You can’t take both mineral water and patent medicine and expect to know which cures you.” Instinct told her to fling it far, far away, but she had to respect his decisions if she expected him to respect hers. She returned the bottle to the table.

  “Neither will cure me,” he said with a fatalistic shrug. “But Fowlers calms the cough when nothing else does.”

  “Which means it could contain codeine,” she warned. “It’s addictive.”

  Perhaps the heat she felt at his lingering look was simply an effect of the room’s closeness.

  “I know better than that. I tested it chemically. Formaldehyde and sulfuric acid detects opium derivatives.” He rudely sprawled out on the bed and eyed her dishabille with lascivious interest. “Are you rested now?” he asked with a degree of hope in his voice.

  Ah, there was the devil he could be. A thrill raced through her at the way his eyelids lowered to study her with masculine curiosity. She was unaccustomed to this sort of attention, so of course she preened a little. Just a little.

  “How do you know what detects opium? I’ve never heard of such a test.” Despite her effort to see her husband as helpless, Emilia had to force her attention to their argument and away from the interesting sprawl of his long legs. . . and other parts. . . on the bed.

  “I invented the test. Don’t have much better to do these days. If I thought it was of any use, I might write a paper on it some time, but I doubt anyone else cares what’s in their quack medicine.” He watched her in the same way a cat watched a mouse.

  “I care,” she said defiantly, refusing to be intimidated. “Apothecaries hand out dangerous chemicals without having any notion of what they do to our bodies. Good food and sunshine can cure ills without quackery.”

  His eyes danced with the laughter that had probably helped earn him his nickname. “Ah, now I see, you’re irritable when you’re peckish. I’ve been selfish. I should have brought something up for you. Let me call the innkeeper. They probably have some of their tasty meat pie left over.”

  “How do you know I’m hungry?” she asked peevishly, looking away from his knowing gaze.

  “Because my sisters become cross if they’re not fed regularly.” He sat up and reached for the bell pull. “I should prove myself useful in some manner.”

  Within minutes, he’d summoned food and drink and ordered hot water for both of them.

  She wanted to be spiteful and disagree, but he was right—she needed food. And she was the one being unreasonable because she didn’t like him taking charge when she should have been able to do so herself. Grudgingly, she took the chair he pulled out. The meat pie smelled wonderful.

  “I am not accustomed to traveling without my maid to deal with servants,” she said stiffly.

  “But you are accustomed to making business propositions to strange men?” he asked, settling back on his bed rather than sit across from her. “I’m surmising you simply forget to eat.”

  “Well, that, too,” she admitted after swallowing the first delicious bite. It was very mean-spirited of her to object to her husband being attentive. “I have had to fight with men for every bit of advanced education I’ve acquired, so a business proposition isn’t new. Traveling without a retinue is. My family is very large, and there is always someone to go with me.”

  “What kind of education must you fight for?” he asked with interest. “It’s not as if any of the universities will allow females.”

  “My family is not poor. I have pin money that allows me to hire students and professors who need a supplemental income.” She tasted the ale he’d provided and wrinkled her nose at it.

  “You have half a dozen lovely sisters with dowries, and the students were all panting on your doorstep, eager to do anything you asked,” he corrected.

  She shrugged. “As I said, I have copious knowledge of available men. Most of them are utterly useless, spineless, or misogynistic beyond all use.” Which was rather why she resented his not being any of these or what she expected at all.

  “But a few of my tutors understood the wisdom of introducing me to their textbooks and lecture notes,” she continued in between bites. “Those truly interested in botany helped me with my experimentation techniques. Unfortunately, I have reached the limits of their knowledge. I need a laboratory, a microscope, gardens, and a conservatory that my father can’t provide.”

  “Do you know how to create a laboratory?” he asked, only raising his eyebrows slightly at her expensive list of demands.

  “I’ve read Antoine Lavoisier’s articles, and pamphlets written by other scientists since then. They are mostly chemistry related,” she said, scowling again at his apparent doubt of her knowledge. “I’ve made lists of what I’ll need.”

  “Is your grandfather’s house large enough for this or will you be using your. . . cousin, didn’t you say? Her grounds?”

  �
�Lady Pascoe-Ives is a distant cousin who recently acted as midwife for two of my close cousins. She’s an herbalist and female physician as well, so we’ve been corresponding. She claims there is adequate room for a laboratory once she raises funds to rebuild the original infirmary.” Emilia finished her pie. After her nap, she felt rejuvenated, but glancing at her husband, she could tell he was half-asleep. He looked much like a satisfied male cat sprawled across the covers.

  “I should leave you to rest. Thank you for thinking of my dinner.” She rose.

  He held out his hand. “If we are to live under the same roof, we should learn some physical means of expressing regard for each other. It’s a good way of defusing arguments.”

  She felt that odd thrill again, the one that wanted to bend over and kiss his cheek, as a wife was entitled to do. “I am not an affectionate person,” she argued.

  But he looked so tired and drawn that she risked the painful prickles of skin against skin, and took his hand. Then daringly, she leaned over to brush his cheek with her lips. She noticed his fever more than the tingling up her arm. When he attempted to pull her closer, she held a hand to his brow. “I will bring you some willow bark tea.”

  “I do not want a nurse,” he said between clenched teeth.

  “You want a money tree,” she said pragmatically, patting his hand and letting it go. “You can drink the tea or not. It’s no matter to me.”

  “I would like a wife,” he stated unequivocally.

  Emilia froze in her tracks. “A wife?”

  “I am still a man,” he growled, holding her gaze.

  She could hear her pulse pounding in her ears. “There is no question about that,” she whispered.

  “We will start work on marriage tomorrow, shall we?”

  The devil was definitely in his eyes. She’d thought them gray earlier, but in this light, they were a seductively pale green. His lips bent in a sensual curve that drew her gaze, and she swallowed. “Tea,” she said senselessly, before fleeing in utter terror.