A School for Unusual Girls (23 page)

“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, 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 have 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.”

“Only one day now,” he added.

“We're so close to an answer, perhaps if we had another hour or two?” I asked.

She glanced at the pitch-black windowpanes. Raindrops pattered against them, clinging to the glass. Candlelight caught on the droplets making them shimmer like golden pearls. She flipped open her pocket watch and shook her head. “You've been up since dawn, and it is already long past a reasonable hour to retire.”

My attention whipped to her. How did she know I'd risen at dawn? How much of my morning adventures had she observed? If she'd seen me climbing the oak tree with my skirts tucked up above my knees, nothing showed on her face. There was no narrow frown promising punishment, no menacing arched brow, no shame-on-you pursed lips. Nothing. Instead she calmly said, “A rested mind is a fruitful mind.”

“I'll finish up here,” Sebastian offered. “You've had a trying day.”

I imagined him saying,
toddle off to bed, little girl
, and wanted to throw my notes at him.

He continued stirring. “If this doesn't work, I'll add more ammonium.”

“The ratio ought not exceed two parts copperas to one part ammonium,” I warned.

He nodded. “Failing that, we'll continue the experiment in the morning.”

Outnumbered, I heaved a resentful sigh. “Keep precise notes.”

I slapped the stack of papers on the worktable and Miss Stranje marched me away like a prisoner being hauled off to prison. She led the way through the dark hall holding aloft a single taper in a small brass holder. Wind moaned through the mullioned windows and the walls creaked. A draft swept through the hall and the flame guttered, casting an unsteady orange glow against the dark paneling.

A tidal wave of isolation washed over me. The house, the night, and the storm threatened to swallow me up. I wanted to run back to the laboratory, back to the light, back to Sebastian. Instead, I quickened my steps to keep up with her and remain in the small flickering orb of our lone candle. In the distance, a clock chimed the hour. “If we were in London, I would be allowed to stay out much later than this.” I argued with more than a little irritation in my voice. “I've heard some balls are not even over until it's nearly dawn.”

“We are not in London.”

“All the same, is not this experiment more important than staying up late to dance and flirt at some foolish ball?”

“An interesting argument,” she said impassively. “But if, as you say, staying up excessively late is foolish when practiced in London, it would be no less foolish to do so here.”

I hurried up the stairs behind her. “I thought you wanted me to produce the formula at all costs.”

“Not at the risk of your life. The fumes compromised your health yesterday. Testing your stamina tonight hardly seems a wise course of action.” She clucked her tongue. “The death of a student is always so ticklish to explain to the authorities.”

If she intended to be humorous, she missed the mark. I returned to the issue. “Working late wouldn't kill me.”

“A mistake in mixing chemicals might.”

“But other lives
are
at stake here—more important lives than mine.”
Sebastian's for one
.

Miss Stranje stopped and held the candle up nearer to my face. She looked quite perturbed about my last argument. “Are you God? Who else is equipped to make such a judgment?” she asked. The candle exaggerated her harsh features. She became almost gargoyle-like frowning at me so intensely. “Listen to me carefully, Georgiana Fitzwilliam. It is impossible to know the importance of one's life. You have no way of knowing what effect you will have on mankind.”

She lowered the candle and proceeded up the stairs. “Sleep, Miss Fitzwilliam. Sleep is of paramount importance now. Morning will be here soon enough. We are both tired and I have a long journey to Shoreham ahead of me tomorrow.”

She stopped in her tracks and huffed as if she hadn't intended to say that last bit. I remembered her argument with Captain Grey. Clearly, she wasn't looking forward to this trip to see her sister. I itched to know more about it, but she straightened her shoulders and returned to her customary businesslike manner.

“You may resume your quest first thing in the morning, after your mind is rested. We simply cannot afford for you to make another potentially fatal error. When you are tired, you are far more likely to rush to a faulty conclusion.”

No one had ever debated so rationally against me before. It was refreshing and annoying at the same time. With a defeated mumble, I asked, “Are you always this sensible?”

“Sensible?” Her candle flickered. For an instant, I thought I saw her smile. “No. Not always. I'm afraid I have been accused of acting rather impulsively at times. Not unlike yourself.”

“Hard to imagine
you
jumping out of an attic window strapped to a kite.”

“I might surprise you. I understand more than you think. Which brings me to a point of some concern.”

She stopped on the landing and turned, waiting for me, lowering the candle so that I could see my way up the stairs. I froze, startled. The candle illuminated a roaring lion's head carved on the balustrade. The beast seemed to burst out of the dark, his mouth open, teeth bared, and his thick tongue protruding. She walked on leaving me in the dark with the lion. I hurried to catch up. “A point of concern about what?”

“I must ask you to proceed cautiously in your dealings with Lord Wyatt.”

I raised my hand in a pledge. “I promise not to asphyxiate him ever again.”

“How very good of you,” she said in a dry humorless tone. “But you know perfectly well that isn't what I mean.”

My stomach somersaulted. Had she guessed the way I felt about him? How much had she observed that morning? She couldn't possibly know that I'd wanted to kiss him. She waited for my response, saying nothing to alleviate my frantic unasked questions.

“Cautious how?” I blurted.

We reached the dormitory floor and she slowed her steps. “Lord Wyatt is a young man of intellect and action. A soldier. A strategist. For these reasons, he studiously avoids matters of the heart. He does not bestow his affections easily. You must not wound him. He has experienced enough hurt for several lifetimes.”

“Me?”
Wound him?
Could she not see how utterly impossible that was? The hour was late, but not so late that she should suddenly begin talking utter nonsense. “It is unlikely that I should ever hurt
anyone
in that regard.”

“You think not?”

“I'm certain of it. I harbor no false hopes in that direction. Indeed, contrary to what my mother may be plotting or planning, I shall never marry.”