Diary of an Accidental Wallflower

by Jennifer McQuiston

  He dragged a hand through his hair, though he really wanted to drag it through hers. He’d never seen it unbound before, and even with its dampness, it glowed with life and vitality.

  “Not a teetotaler.” Not tonight, at any rate. “I am just . . . careful.”

  Daniel poured himself a glass, this time in a cup with a broken handle. “Even a glass or two can impair a man’s judgment, and I need my wits about me to do my work.” He took a long swallow. “But as I’ve just completed the last of my experiments with my anesthetic regulator today, I believe I’ve earned a celebratory glass myself.”

  “You’ve finished it?” she asked, and he could imagine—perhaps naively—that he could see a flush of excitement steal across her cheeks.

  His stomach churned—whether from the burn of the whisky or the burn of her presence, it was difficult to be sure. What was she doing here, asking questions, as if she had a right to be interested in his work? She’d made his position in her life damnably clear last night. He wiped a sleeve across his mouth. “I stayed up all night to finish it,” he admitted, though he did not add he was driven, in part, by frustration over their parting. “I wrote the manuscript this morning, and sent it on to the editors at the Lancet this afternoon.”

  “You must be relieved.”

  “Relieved?” He snorted. “Not bloody likely. The fate of six months of work now rests in the hands of an editor who likely doesn’t know his arse from his elbow.”

  “But . . . if it works, surely they will have to publish it.”

  “If history is any judge, the editors will have their own opinion on what constitutes a publishable finding. And they’ve viewed my ideas none too favorably in the past.”

  He could see her fingers tighten around her chipped cup. After a moment she raised her glass. “Well then, we should drink to your hopeful success. If anyone deserves it, it is you.”

  He raised his own glass, though he harbored doubts about his ability to swallow it properly, after such a pretty speech. “To success,” he echoed, then tossed it back. The whisky slid down his throat like fire. He savored the burn. If nothing else it was reminder that he was not dreaming—an important fact to remember, given that he was drinking a fine Scottish whisky in the presence of one very forbidden Miss Clare Westmore.

  She set her cup down and then circled his dining table. Her fingers trailed over the bowl with the frogs, then lingered over the chaotic profusion of papers that still littered the table’s surface. “This is where you work in the evenings?”

  “Yes. I am sorry for the . . . er . . . mess,” he offered, lacking a better description for the tangle of papers and pests. “I use amphibians in my experiments.” He stepped closer and reached out to straighten his notes. “I was not expecting you.”

  Damn it, why was he apologizing?

  This was his flat. His frogs. She had not been invited, and the condition of his things did not sit in wait of her approval.

  “No, I imagine not. Not after last night.” She sighed, and the sound seemed to echo through him like a cold wind. “I know you are angry. I can see it in the way you look at me.”

  He stayed silent. Not to be cruel, but because he didn’t know how to answer her.

  Her fingers brushed against the regulator, where it lay on its side in an inconspicuous heap. By appearances, it looked little more than a jumble of parts, he knew. The sort of thing a blacksmith might put together on a lark. Or a dare.

  Somehow, though, she seemed to know. “Do you mind if I touch it?”

  Her innocent question took his thoughts in a decidedly not innocent direction. If she’d asked that exact question last night, they might have had a different ending to the evening. Instead, he’d reacted to protect her, and ended up embarrassing them both.

  He shoved such an incongruent thought from his head and tried to focus on the present. He wasn’t sure what she wanted, but at the moment it didn’t seem to be a return to last night’s argument. He’d never shown his work to anyone before, aside from writing the details of its performance down on paper, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to show it to her now.

  But all it took was her hesitant smile, and as if on the cusp of a dream, he lifted the regulator and placed it in her hands.

  “The chloroform rests here.” He pointed to the machine’s tin body. “As it evaporates, it mixes with air and creates a vaporous mixture that can be inhaled.”

  “I’m not familiar with chloroform, although I’ve read about the uses of ether in surgery in the Times,” she said, turning it over and inspecting the tubing. “The article I read claimed it was dangerous. Is this safe to use?”

  “Chloroform and ether can be dangerous, especially in the hands of someone lacking the proper experience,” he admitted, thinking of the handful of anesthetic deaths he had observed at the hands of ether just in his six months at St. Bart’s. “One advantage of chloroform over ether seems to be its more agreeable effects on the body. A Scottish physician published a pamphlet on it last November, and when I read it, I was seized with the idea for a regulator that might deliver the vapor of the drug more safely. I left my practice in Yorkshire to come to London and work on it.”

  She turned it over in her hands, and he could tell she was studying how the pieces fit together. “It is a miraculous invention,” she said simply.

  A tremor of what may have been pride arced through him. Not only pride in himself, or even in his hard-fought accomplishment. Pride in her, in her innate curiosity, her ability to see things others did not.

  “Not miraculous,” he said, shaking his head. “A simple concept, really. Chloroform vapor is heavier than air, and I simply took advantage of the fact to collect it in a precise manner. I can envision its use in surgeries. Midwifery. Even extracting a tooth could be done far more safely.” His pulse sped up, as it always did when he considered how the future of medicine could be shaped by such a device. “The possibilities are limitless.”

  Her eyes reached out to him, probing. “The potential income as well.”

  Daniel stiffened. “I do not intend to patent this invention, Clare. Fate is blind in its brutality. The lower classes are already discriminated against in every other aspect of their lives. I would not invent a means of relief for their suffering, only to deny it to them by selling it at auction to the highest bidder.”

  She caught her lower lip between her teeth, worrying it a moment. “But even if you do not patent it, surely there is some income that might be anticipated, however small.”

  Daniel shook his head. Did she see this as some future financial security for him, then? A potential replacement for the loss of her dowry, should she be foolish enough to be actually considering his mention of marriage? Hope flared wildly in his chest, but in the end he mercilessly tamped it down. Even if given a choice to do it over, he wouldn’t. He might cut off his right arm to keep her, but he could not sell others’ souls in the hopes of acquiring hers.

  “The paper I submitted to the Lancet explains how to make it. How to replicate it. Details, diagrams, everything. I always intended it to be accessible to everyone.” He shook his head. “There will be no money for me in this discovery.”

  Her gaze scraped against his skin. “This is what drives you, isn’t it?” she whispered. “’Tis not money, or even fame. It’s the potential in this discovery. The desire to help those who need it.” She paused. “Men like your father.”

  “Yes.” He ground his teeth together. “If the physician who’d treated my father had access to a safer anesthetic and a precise way to deliver it, perhaps the outcome would have been different.” Daniel held his breath, waiting for her reaction. For some reason he didn’t care to examine, her opinion mattered to him.

  A terrifyingly good deal.

  “Would you show me how it all works?” she asked, holding it out.

  And he knew that he was done for.

  Chapter 27

  Clare surprised herself by the audacity of her question. On the table, crick
ets jeered at her from a pail. It seemed as though they were laughing at her.

  The question remained . . . would he?

  She’d wanted only to see him this evening. To apologize for last night, and to tell him of the astonishing revelations of the morning.

  And—if she were honest with herself—to rest a quiet moment in the comfort of his arms.

  But the residual wariness in his eyes when she’d stepped across his threshold had held back the more pertinent questions that wanted to tumble from her. Somehow, this one had dared to take their place.

  “All right.” He began to work on his necktie. She watched, her breath in her throat as he pulled it free from his collar in a long, sensual slide. He picked up the lamp and walked toward his bed, with its damp blanket and heart-stopping possibilities. For a moment she stood still, shivering in her wet clothes, wondering if perhaps he’d misinterpreted her question.

  “Show me” could mean a good many things.

  “Bring the regulator over here,” he called out. He placed the lamp down on the bedside table, then sat down on the bed and rolled up first one sleeve, then the other. “And the brown bottle on the table as well. Take care not to drop it, though.” A hint of bemusement infused his voice. “That is a mistake I am not eager to repeat. The scent has lingered for weeks from the last time I dropped it.”

  Clare fetched the requested items. So that explained the fragrance she so associated with him, that sweet, cloying scent that made her want to bury her nose in his jacket and never come up for air. She wondered what he would think if she admitted such a thing.

  “Are you limping?” he asked, distracting her from the task at hand.

  At the unexpected question, the bottle almost slipped out of her fingers. She pulled it close against her chest, her heart pounding. “My ankle is feeling fine.”

  “I should hope so, given that it is your other foot you are favoring tonight.”

  The thought that he noticed such a small, insignificant thing startled her nearly as much as the near-miss with the chloroform bottle. “I had a door slammed on my foot,” she admitted, “but it does not hurt overmuch.” She set the bottle down gingerly on the bedside table. “Smithfield’s residents are not the friendliest of souls.”

  He began unbuttoning the first few buttons of his shirt. “Considering the reception I have received at your Society functions, I think I should prefer Smithfield. Aside from Lady Austerley, the citizens of Mayfair haven’t exactly flung their doors open in welcome for me, either.” He pointed behind her. “There’s a chair, just there. You will want to sit for this, I think.”

  She took the indicated seat and watched as he pulled the stopper from the bottle and poured a small amount of chloroform into the tin’s port. The sweet, cloying scent grew stronger, and she held her breath.

  As if he could sense her unease, he smiled at her. “There is no need to worry here. Outside the device, the mixture of air is too strong for the chloroform to have much of an effect.” His smile turned grim as he replaced the stopper. “There are several stages to the effects of anesthesia, and I want you to be prepared.”

  “You mean, you don’t just fall asleep?”

  “No. It renders a body unconscious, but not asleep. You can wake a sleeping person, but a patient under the effects of chloroform cannot be roused.” He placed the stopper back in the bottle and set it down on the table. “Now, in the first minute or so after placing the mask, I may seem highly agreeable. There is a sense of euphoria that comes with the first degree of anesthesia, but then my thoughts will become more disordered. Possibly even delusional. I need you to count to one hundred. Timing is crucial, otherwise it can be dangerous.”

  “Dangerous?” Clare straightened in alarm, her fingers curling in protest around the hard edge of the chair seat. “I thought you said it was safer than ether. I do not think—”

  His hand reached out to touch hers. “Safer, yes. But not entirely without risk. The danger will be assuaged by having someone sensible monitoring the effects, I should think. Afterward, the sequence occurs much in reverse.” He squeezed her hand. “You can do this, Clare. I trust you.”

  She breathed out. Nodded.

  He lay back on the bed, though he did not yet fit the mask to his face. “I will hold it in place, but remember, it is vital you remove the mask after I am unconscious, or else I will continue breathing the vapor and can suffer too heavy a dose.”

  Clare shivered beneath her skin, and not only because of the cold seeping through her wet clothes. How on earth would she have the courage to wait until she reached one hundred, chased by a dire warning like that? The thought of putting him at risk made her feel more than a little ill.

  But he believed in this machine, and in the strength of his own experiments.

  The least she could do was believe in him.

  He held the mask over his nose. Clare held her own breath as the faint, pungent scent of vaporized chloroform filled the air. It is far more concentrated in the mask, she reminded herself, but that only made her stomach turn over in fear for him.

  “One, two, three.” She frowned, concentrating on the numbers. “Four, five, six.”

  She made it to fifteen without seeing what she considered any change in Daniel’s behavior, but then, just as she reached twenty, his muffled voice rang out.

  “God, you are beautiful.”

  She forgot, for the moment, to count properly. Dark, serious eyes met hers above the bit of brass and tubing, and for a moment she felt as though she were the one going under, flailing against the undertow of that hypnotic gaze. She shook her head in denial. “You are deranged. I look like a drowned rat.” She paused, sorting out where she had been before his words had pulled her from her task. “Thirty, thirty-one, thirty-two.”

  “Miss Westmore.” Was it just her imagination, or did his voice sound more slurred than affronted? “Did you just call me deranged?”

  “Thirty-five, thirty-six.”

  “I am a fellow of the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society.”

  In spite of herself, Clare smiled. “Yes, I recall you mentioned that, once upon a time.”

  “It means I am sworn to honesty in all matters personal and professional. You are beautiful, Clare. You may trust me on this.”

  She laughed out loud, remembering his earlier warning. Highly agreeable, indeed.

  “Ah, an elusive sighting of Miss Westmore’s crooked left cuspid.” His voice seemed to be weakening now, but he was apparently still possessed enough of his faculties to reach out with his unencumbered hand to cup her cheek. “I see it in my dreams, you know.”

  She caught her breath, as much at his words as the touch of his hand. He’d noticed her tooth? She felt a restless stirring at the thought—not from embarrassment, or resentment that he should mention it. It was hard to resent the reminder of her physical imperfection when he also said he thought her beautiful. Although . . . perhaps this was less the agreeable phase of the experiment and more the disordered delusion he had warned her about.

  By the time she hit seventy, his dark, thick lashes had begun to flutter against the stubbled arc of his cheek and his hand had fallen away. By one hundred he was well and fully unconscious, and she reached out and tugged the mask from his unprotesting fingers.

  “Daniel?” she whispered. She tapped his shoulder.

  Oh, God. There was no response.

  It was like watching someone die before your eyes.

  She felt a tremor of terror to think that he had willingly done this to himself, all because she had asked him to show her his work.

  She grasped his hand, and was relieved to find it was warm beneath hers. Her finger rubbed against the tiny scar on his thumb, the one she had spied during his first visit to her drawing room, only two weeks prior but seemingly a lifetime ago. She remembered how it had proved he was human, rather than some Greek god fallen to earth. She resolved to ask him how he had acquired it, should they be fortunate enough to escape this foolish ende
avor with his wits intact. At the moment she feared for the worst.

  Despite her fears, she could see his chest rise and fall in a faint but steady rhythm. But the rest of his body, and that beautiful, quick mind . . . those things were utterly silent. She felt helpless in the face of such a striking vulnerability.

  Gradually, she began to convince herself he was not in distress. Indeed, if she looked carefully, she could already see signs of his impending recovery: a fluttering of eyes beneath his closed lids, the purposeful curl of his fingers into his palms. The trust it must have required to put his life in her hands in this manner staggered her.

  Perhaps there was a glimmer of hope here, a chance he didn’t hate her after all.

  She reached out and slipped a hand beneath his unbuttoned shirt, her palm resting against the firm, reassuring bump of his heart. He was startlingly hot. Or perhaps it was that she was cold. Her fingers curved into his skin, the hair there crisp and springy, and she marveled at the stark difference in its texture compared to her own. She leaned over and placed her ear against his lips, seeking audible reassurance of his breath sounds. “Brilliant man,” she whispered, her face turned so she could see his fluttering eyes. “You have done it. Not only shown me, you’ve shown them all.”

  She gasped as his hand snaked up to grasp the back of her neck. The moment hovered, unscripted and unsure. He blinked in muted awareness and then his dark eyes anchored insistently to hers. “Clare?”

  To her needy ears, it sounded more like a benediction than a curse.

  “Yes,” she gasped, though his fingers were punishing against her skin. Her hands crept up to tighten over his, telling him by touch of her presence. “I am here.”

  His grip slowly loosened, but as she drew his hands back down and straightened her back, her fingers lingered over his. She felt the small scar on his thumb again, and remembered her promise to herself. “Daniel,” she whispered, sensing he was beginning to drift away. She felt the sharp arc of panic. He couldn’t sleep, not now that she had finally gotten him back. “How did you get this mark?” She rubbed her finger over it. “Was it the slip of a scalpel?”