Chemistry of Magic

by Patricia Rice

  Not one to dwell on regrets, Dare rattled the locked door to a long, low shed he’d been eyeing as possible work space. He’d have to go back to the house and find the keys. Turning to leave, he noticed a garden gnome leaning over the stone fence around what was presumably the kitchen garden. Wearing a nondescript coat, baggy trousers, and a grimy cap, the gnome presented a toothless, withered crabapple face as Dare approached.

  “Shame to let ’at garden go,” the creature said through missing front teeth. “Taters and onions still growin’. Summat ’em herbs the lady likes under ta weeds. Reckon you need a gardener?” he asked with little hope in his voice.

  A gardener. Emilia wanted gardens. He had a blasted estate now which needed tending. Watching coins fly out the window, Dane leaned his hip against the wall and tried to see food in the overgrown greenery. He wouldn’t know a potato from an onion. “Were you Sir Harry’s gardener?”

  The gnome bobbed his head. “Name’s Artur. I’m old, but I can do ta work.”

  “You were let go when Sir Harry died?” One more task on his list—find out what the hell had happened here.

  “Not a’til dey said ta place was bein’ torn down. Sorry I was to see such a grand place go, but I hear tat’s changed now?”

  Finally realizing the old gent couldn’t pronounce th, and that his name was probably Arthur, Dane nodded. “We have no intention of tearing it down. Do you know where to find the fellow who told you otherwise?”

  Arthur ducked his head and looked at his feet. “Railroad swell, I reckon. I got paid my wages for ta half year’s work I’d done and told I warn’t needed more. Didn’t seem right, but times change.”

  Dare’s gut ground more, but he couldn’t believe anyone in his consortium would have done this. “Should you see the gentleman again, let us know. We paid to keep staff on, not let you go.”

  The old man turned rheumy eyes toward him. “You mean I can have my place back?”

  “If my wife approves. The garden is hers.” He certainly wanted no part of it anyway.

  Arthur beamed with relief. “I’ll just start here. Her ladyship can let me know when she’s ready. Good to have you here, m’lord.”

  Whistling through the gaps in his few remaining teeth, the gnome hobbled down to the kitchen gate.

  Dare realized he was now responsible for a great peacock and an antiquated gnome, as well as their personal servants, one of whom was never around. What next? Circus ponies? Invisible men?

  Maybe he should consider making everyone happy before he died and leave them to figure out their own security later.

  As his father had.

  Dane found a bush in which to cast up the contents of his churning stomach.

  As the marquess’s borrowed berlin rolled down a narrow lane between stone walls in the direction of Alder Abbey, Emilia primly folded her gloved hands in her lap while her husband closed his eyes and rested his head against the seat back. He’d refused the lunch Mrs. Peacock had conjured from nothing and had taken a nap instead. Emilia hadn’t dared touch him for fear he’d notice.

  She was terrified. She was so far out of her normal milieu that she feared she’d never feel secure again. She had a dying husband who really ought to be saved if possible, but she didn’t know how to approach him about the odd abilities he wouldn’t believe. Worse, she didn’t know if she’d shorten her own life even if he did allow her to try. And she was supposed to manage a household while continuing her experiments and producing the pharmacopeia that had occupied most of her adult life. That seemed to be the small tip of the iceberg in the ocean of responsibilities she was about to drown in.

  The carriage turned up an even narrower drive into a jungle of neglect worse than her own lawn. She couldn’t decide if that was good or bad. She had thought the Pascoe-Ives had money, but then, a deteriorating abbey was a great deal of work, and they’d only been married a month or so.

  The ivy-covered, L-shaped building and long low cloister walls loomed into view. The aging stone and medieval arches were picturesque. Emilia hoped they were sound.

  Dare sat up as the horses slowed. He whistled as he studied the ancient stone walls. “They will need a king’s fortune to restore that place.”

  “I understand the main portion was comfortably occupied until a few decades ago.” Emilia strained to see through the window. “It is beyond the cloister that most concerns me. The abbey would once have had an infirmary and a medicinal garden outside the walls. We are hoping we can raise funds to restore them.”

  A tall, dark-haired Ives, who Emilia recognized from her cousin Aster’s mad household, trotted around the corner with a toddler perched on his shoulder. He chased after another toddler of approximately the same age as the first. The boy on foot raced up to the enormous carriage horses, shouting in delight. Grinning broadly, the man set down his daughter and waited for the footman to lower the steps, then held out his hand to assist Emilia down. “Lady Dare, welcome! Bridey has been dying to meet you. Aster sends her regards and says to send her a list of needed staff when you’re ready.”

  “If you call my cousin by her name, you know we are informal. You must call me Emilia, sir. We are all family. I am still the annoyingly lofty creature your nephews complain about, when they notice my existence at all.”

  “Surely not,” Dare said, swinging down from the carriage, the picture of health, as if he had not been pale and weak moments before. “Theo isn’t such a nod-cock as to complain about a lovely lady in the house.”

  He stuck out his hand to shake Pascoe’s. “We met at Iveston, when I was consulting with Theo on microscope glass.”

  “Devil Dare, yes, I believe I’ve heard the tales,” Sir Pascoe acknowledged. “I doubt you’ll appreciate the risk of this venture, but come in. Let us show you around—after I gather up my rascals.”

  Their host scooped up the two laughing toddlers and handed them over to a harassed-looking nursemaid, who had just run around the corner in apparent pursuit of her charges. Emilia thought the curly-haired cherubs were adorable, but then, she didn’t have to run after them.

  Could they afford nursemaids should she have a child? She certainly couldn’t take care of a babe! Aside from being paralyzed with fear about holding a babe, she simply didn’t have time or knowledge.

  The impressive medieval doors opened onto an equally impressive hall of stained glass and a soaring cathedral ceiling. To either side of the hall, however, were more modern chambers.

  Emilia caught only a brief glimpse of the salons as Sir Pascoe led them deeper into the interior. She knew he had earned his title and this property for aiding the king with vital national issues. She had met him as an intense diplomat in fashionable clothing, looking very much the black-haired imposing Ives that he was. But today, he was casually dressed in rural tweeds and leather and laughing as he gestured at gargoyles and saints carved into the walls and ceilings.

  “My bride and I argue the benefits of renovation over restoration,” Pascoe said as he led the way down still another rambling corridor. “I think we should leave the gargoyles to frighten off the vultures who will inevitably descend to pick our bones. Bridey says we must dress as monks and nuns to do that.”

  “Vultures?” Dare asked. “You’re expecting trouble?”

  “I love trouble,” Pascoe said with relish. “I’m hoping for it.” He shoved open a door that led into an arched walkway.

  Dare glanced down at Emilia with questions in his eyes.

  “We’re women,” she whispered in explanation. “Medical practitioners do not want women treating women. It is all very foolish. I cannot believe anything will come of it.”

  “Says the scholar who knows nothing of the extreme arrogance of men. Bridey should be in here.” Pascoe pushed open another door into a wide, stone-floored room smelling of drying herbs. An auburn-haired woman as tall as Emilia, but better proportioned, looked up from a table at their entrance.

  “Emilia, at last,” the woman exclaimed, wiping her hand
s on her apron. “And Lord Dare, how good to meet you. We did not know whether to interrupt your honeymoon idyll so soon.”

  As they exchanged pleasantries, Emilia could sense her husband’s tension. Assuming he was fighting off a cough, she studied the array of herbs Bridey had accumulated.

  “Would you mind if I helped myself to some of your horehound and a bit of that sage?” she asked, finding the herbs in the drying leaves overhead. “Our wagon broke a wheel and my supplies haven’t arrived.”

  “If we are to work together, you must consider this room as your own,” Bridey declared. “I have much to learn from you. I’m eager to see this pharmacopeia you’ve described.” She reached for the requested leaves.

  Delighted to have someone who understood the properties of herbs almost as well as she did, Emilia happily delved into a familiar environment, leaving Dare to occupy himself. While she conferred over cough recipes, Dare and Pascoe wandered to the door in a discussion of their own.

  Only when Sir Pascoe shouted “Railroad!” did unease knot her stomach.

  Her husband looked pale but determined. Sir Pascoe merely looked livid.

  Emilia exchanged a glance with Bridey, and as one, they wiped off their hands and left their work on the table.

  Chapter 9

  “Railroads are the country’s future,” Dare insisted as he sipped the bitter herbal tea his wife had forced upon him. “In war time, they will speed the transportation of coal, iron, and wood to our ports for the navy.”

  Only slightly older than Dare but more experienced in the ways of governance, Pascoe waved a dismissive hand. “I understand their importance. I had hoped to find a consortium in which to invest. But the task of land acquisition is monumental and expensive. The tracks need to be laid through wasteland, not crop-bearing fields.”

  “Fine for freight, but what about transporting people? Imagine taking the train from London to Edinburgh in hours instead of days!” Dare had yet to mention the needed land for track already planned for Alder. He’d fallen asleep before he’d had a chance to examine the survey maps.

  He was afraid just his casual broaching of the subject was leading toward disaster. His family’s future relied on his ability to talk people into what he wanted. If the disease was attacking his brain and his ability, he was in trouble. He clenched his teeth and listened rather than offer protest.

  “We can’t have noisy, coal-spewing monsters near towns until we know they’re reliable,” Pascoe said, reaching for a crumpet. “For one thing, they’ll terrify horses.”

  The beautiful wife Dare wished to seduce was watching them with consternation. He was accustomed to taking risks. Emilia was not. He fought his cough and changed the subject until he had more information. “Tell me more about the vultures that threaten this school my bride wishes to work in.”

  Lady Pascoe—Bridey—spoke up. “It is nothing yet. Pascoe cynically expects the worse. For now, we’re only setting up the infirmary and schoolrooms. Aster and Emilia’s mother will help us find a few select women to be trained as midwives. Women have performed that task for centuries. This insistence that only a male physician can treat a woman’s body is utter idiocy.”

  Dare frowned. “You have the skills and training of a licensed physician?”

  “As much as I have the skills of an apothecary,” Emilia said in that stiff polite voice she sometimes used. “No man will teach us or allow us to work as their assistants, an education required by law—laws passed by men, you will remember. We are self-taught for the most part.”

  By Jove, she might not talk much, but when she did, she packed a punch. Before Dare could take adamant exception to his wife working as an apothecary, Bridey interceded.

  “My grandfather was a physician. He taught me. I have learned more from experience, just as any good physician must if he is to be of any use. We do not mean to interfere where there are proper physicians and hospitals and wealth enough to pay for them. What we want to do is help women who do not have access to medical care.”

  Dare lifted a questioning eyebrow to his wealthy city wife who had never been deprived of anything in her life. She met his gaze with defiance.

  “I have done the research and study that most apothecaries have not,” she insisted. “I have read everything available, tested, experimented, and know what works and what does not. I am trying to learn why things work and better ways of administering medicines, which is why I need a laboratory. If I had been trained by a male apothecary, I would simply have been taught how to measure and mix ingredients according to whatever recipe book he uses. And most of those are so outdated as to be laughable.”

  Outdated Dare understood. Horses and wagons and herbal medicines were outdated. The future was in steam engines and minerals. But he knew when he was outnumbered. With a determined interest in sharing his bedchamber with a willing wife, he sipped his tea and just listened to their audacious plans. He prayed Emilia did not mean to invest her funds in this losing proposition, but he knew better than to mention that as well.

  In fact, he might choke on all the things he wasn’t saying. But his bride had an uncanny way of knowing when he was losing his strength. She rose and offered their farewells, welcoming their new friends to visit their hovel soon so they could make plans.

  “I am turning into an old curmudgeon,” Dare grumbled as he handed her into the carriage and pulled himself in like a weakling.

  “Is it illness that turns people into curmudgeons, not age?” she asked distractedly. “Sir Harry would grumble and carp and poke fun at the servants, but I thought it was because he was older and wiser than everyone else.”

  “Illness and wisdom,” he decided, dropping into the cushions with relief. “I think I should be allowed to spend my final months pointing out the fallacies of everyone around me.”

  She snickered. His lady wife snickered. Dare turned a cynically lifted brow in her direction. “You laugh. I am very wise. I married you, did I not?”

  That brought an outright chuckle. He removed her confounded hat so he could see her smile. “You don’t smile enough,” he told her. “See, there’s my curmudgeonly wisdom for today.”

  “I think I would like it very much if we could be foolish for the rest of the day instead of wise. I feel as if I’m carrying the weight of the world on my shoulders. Normally, I like feeling worthy, but today, I want to laugh and feel joy. What does your wisdom make of that, my Lord Curmudgeon?”

  “That my lady needs kissing.” Which he proceeded to do, dragging her against his side and planting kisses all over her cheek and down her swan-like throat until she squealed.

  At least he still knew how to woo a woman.

  The wagon with their boxes had arrived while they were gone. Their one footman and two drivers had unloaded everything into the cobwebbed parlor, among the discarded linens and spiders. Emilia studied the disarray in exhaustion. She had never fully realized how much she had relied on her mother’s efficient staff.

  Her husband wrapped his arm around her waist and surveyed the dusty stacks with a chuckle. She didn’t feel any fever pouring off of him. She really needed to study why Dare’s disease didn’t pain her by touching as others did.

  When she wasn’t consumed by lust, however, she could sense his weariness, if not his pain. He shouldn’t be worrying about carting heavy boxes about. She really needed to take notes about how the consumption affected him. His symptoms didn’t seem to quite match what she’d read—which wasn’t unusual. Medical science was imprecise at best, and her understanding leaned toward herbs and not anatomy.

  “Do we open the crates methodically one at a time, or just rip them open willy-nilly in search of what we need at the moment?” he asked.

  “We do neither right now,” she said. “We will dress for dinner and see what our new cook has prepared for us out of thin air, although I do hope our pantry supplies have also arrived.”

  He tugged one of the straying strands of hair she hadn’t adequately pinned. “Dress
for dinner? In this hovel? Why?”

  “Because that is what one does?” she asked, never having thought about it.

  “This one doesn’t,” he declared. “Why should we not start off as we mean to carry on?”

  As she meant to carry on, since he wouldn’t necessarily be here to support her in this outrageousness in a year from now. The notion of dealing with all this by herself was suddenly overwhelming, and a little more heart-breaking than she’d envisaged.

  She had always assumed once she married, she’d simply move into her great-grandfather’s familiar home with everything being exactly the same. She had not really even worked a husband into the picture, assuming he’d go his own way. But these past days had shattered that fantasy. She hadn’t wanted to rely on Dare, but she had been, because she was so accustomed to having family with her. Once he was gone. . . She would have to carve an entirely new existence all on her own. She took a deep breath to suppress her panic and organize her thoughts.

  “Since my clothes are somewhere among all those trunks,” she decided, “I suppose I can wear the same gown this evening. But we do have to maintain a level of civilization once we are in a position to expect company. And I still really must wash and straighten up before dinner.” She turned pointedly toward the stairs, walking away from his. . . unsettling. . . arm.

  “Shouldn’t your maid be down here sorting through all this, looking for your trunks?” Dare asked, following on her heels, emanating masculine energy and disturbing her mind.

  “Bessie? She will if I tell her to. But she has more important tasks.”

  “Does she sew your clothing, then? I thought you had a modiste for that.”

  Emilia stopped in the upper corridor to examine him quizzically. “Does it matter what Bessie does? I am not asking what your James does all day.”

  Dare flashed her one of his charming grins, but it didn’t seem to quite reach his eyes. Her husband was a man of many layers.

  “My clothing trunks weren’t in that jumble down there,” he informed her. “While your Bessie was twiddling her thumbs, James has probably filled all the wardrobes in the suite with my attire. You’ll have to fight for shelf space. I daresay he has hot water heating and my evening clothes pressed and laid out, although he knows by now not to expect me to actually wear them.”