Binding the Baron (Alchemy of Desire #1)

Chapter 1

LONDON’S MOST POPULAR POTION

The potion shop in Finsbury Square demanded attention. No matter it was exactly the same size as the surrounding buildings, it felt bigger. Same style as the others, too—each building rising toward the sky in red brick and white stone. Fan windows, bright doors, well kept, and well ordered.

And yet it seemed to wink. To laugh. If it were a girl, it would throw its head back with a toss of the hair and a hearty guffaw as all the other buildings—staid men of a certain age with receding hairlines and even more vanishing senses of humor—looked on with upturned noses and shirt points picking at their whiskers.

Was it the windows, pristine and glinting in the late morning sun?

Behind the glass, vines and leaves crowded the space, obscuring whoever might be bustling about in there.

Those vines slithered as if living. The plants rustled as if breathing.

And the sign above the door swung in the wind, its gold lettering playful yet solid: Lady Guinevere’s Potions.

The words seemed to say, Trust us. There is no problem too dire it cannot find remedy beyond this door.

Diana hoped so. Hope had led her here, though she’d never before been east of St. Paul’s. East London—alchemist territory. Few members of the transcendent ton wandered there purposefully. No wonder fear held her feet fast.

But Alchemists were merely men, scientists, laborers. Their unmatched skill with metals a trade they’d labored to learn. Impressive, but not dangerous.

And the entrance to the shop—yellow and bright and harmless—was merely a door!

Not… not Charybdis or Morgan le Fay. Though whispers shifting from lips to ears across ballrooms suggested the scandalous Lady Guinevere herself, owner of the winking shop in question, could claim that historical witch as an ancestor.

Witchery ran in the lady’s veins, they said, and bubbled in her potions.

Impossible. Morgan le Fay had been transcendent, one of the few women to possess magic before it had coalesced in the veins of men alone.

Besides, only those with titles held true magic.

Men with titles. And most agreed Lady Guinevere was nothing more than a marketing scheme.

She was likely a plain old Jane or Susan, a Miss Smith.

But the owner of the first potion shop, the only potion shop, in London would need a flashy moniker, so she’d created one for herself.

Nothing to fear here, yet…

Diana took a shaky step backward toward the clopping of hooves behind her. Horses, phaetons, carts, and hacks taking Londoners every which way.

While she had nowhere to go.

Except for inside the shop.

With a breath that strained the buttons of her pelisse, Diana opened the door and stepped inside.

She saw only a glimpse of her reflection in the window, but it was enough to startle her.

Not the one was familiar with. Her new appearance was just one more thing to get used to in life after her grandfather’s death.

She inhaled, exhaled, and let the merry tinkling of bells breaking above her head as she entered the shop banish the distress shivering down her spine.

The yellow door closed with a soft click behind her.

Her first breath was a revelation. Lavender.

Lemon. And something spicier than both. One inhalation of the shop air banished London from her lungs.

Other scents too, so many she could not disentangle them.

Hints only before they whisked away—bergamot and mint and ink and wine.

The smells of winter and summer, of autumn and spring.

In this shop, sunshine had a scent, as did laughter and grief.

And love?

She’d soon find out.

“’Scuse me, miss.” A woman in a starch-white apron carrying a steaming teapot gently nudged her out of the way, disappearing between two large ferns at the side of the shop.

Was there a door there? No outline or frame announced an exit.

No tapestry hid one. But then… where’d she go? Potions were not real magic.

But the shop seemed to sing with it.

“Pardon me, miss.” Another apron dashed past her.

Diana ducked out of the way, fighting for space amongst the others.

Half of those in the crowded shop were dressed like the woman with the teapot, in white aprons and yellow gowns, hair piled simply, neatly atop their heads, gold chatelaines at their waists.

The tiny golden spoons and knives, scissors, thimbles, and other implements Diana could not identify, jingled when they walked.

They must be the potions mistresses, outfitted with the tools of their trade.

The other half were, like Diana, dressed in unremarkable walking gowns and sturdy boots, clothes meant to make them disappear. They were women in need, customers and clients. Desperate? Like Diana?

For the love elixir.

Diana had considered making her own. She’d even found a recipe in the back of an old history book. Kitchen Spells for Household Management in Fifteenth Century England. But she’d not felt like finding and crushing a mouse skull. She shivered. No thank you.

“Can I help you, miss?” A potion mistress stood before her, hands clasped behind her back, the dark, curly knot atop her head slightly askew, like her grin. Her pink gown was soft against her brown skin, and her gray eyes were kind, clever.

“I… I a-am looking…” Her voice sounded so small, terrifyingly hesitant. She despised it. Had the years really ground her down so thoroughly? She cleared her throat, stood taller. “I am looking for Lady Guinevere.”

“They all are. But she’s rarely here, ya know. Don’t you worry, though. We’re all thoroughly trained and wouldn’t be working here if we didn’t possess our own talents for brewing. Follow me.”

Talents. No one used that word for those who could brew potion. That word was reserved for the transcendent ton, those titled men with the world in their magically charged palms and the titled women who birthed them.

Trained. Another odd association. Were they really?

Potion work was usually handed down from mother to daughter, a sort of kitchen skill, a hobby akin to needlework, something to keep bored fingers busy.

Certainly not something to be studied and perfected.

Everyone knew that. Except, it seemed, this potions mistress.

“I’m Miss Maple.” The woman stepped behind a long table that spanned the width of the room every inch of it cluttered with bowls of brass and silver, gold and stone.

Wood, too. Pestles filled in the crevices between bowls, and plant remnants hid the rest of the tabletop.

“You do not have to tell me your name. Most would rather not.” Palms slapped on the table on either side of her body, weight leaned into them. “What can I do for you?”

Even if she had asked for her name, Diana would not have given it. The ton would eviscerate her. Lady Diana Chester in search of a love elixir. For whom, they’d want to know. Her betrothed? A lover?

The ton would get it all wrong.

“I would like”—she licked her lips, the words difficult to push out—“I w-wish to procure a love potion.” What she really wished for was something to strip a person of transcendent powers.

But magic passed through the blood could not be taken away.

Except through death. Even if such a potion existed, use of it would be considered treason, would end with her neck tight in a noose, her feet and skirts swinging.

Peers did not suffer threats to their magic, their blood, their privileges, their lives.

“Of course, miss. We specialize in it, as I’m sure you know.

Other women claim they know the secret of the heart, but they are wrong.

Lady Guinevere, however…” She raised a hand and trailed it along the fronds above their heads, plucked one, long and thin with tiny, heart-shaped leaves.

“Only she knows the truth. And she’s taught it to us.

Easy to make as pissing in a pot. Oh.” Wide eyes, smile faltering.

“I’m not supposed to curse. Apologies, miss. ”

“That is quite all right. Are you going to use that? In the potion?” Diana gestured at the heart-dotted branch waving in Miss Maple’s hand.

“Yes, I am.” She dropped the plant in a gold bowl. “But before I can get going for good, I have to give you the lecture.”

“Lecture?”

“It’s policy, miss.” Miss Maple pulled herself up tall. “Lady G’s love elixir is not permanent. No potion is. Its effects remain only as long as the potion does. In your body, that is. Once you piss it out—blast. Once it leaves your—”

“Yes, I understand.” It was the way of all potions.

“But also, miss, it will not be real love. Real love cannot be bottled, you understand. The love elixir merely activates the physical reactions of the body, makes ’em bigger, makes ’em so big you cannot contain ’em and you think you’re in love.”

Diana raised a brow. “Not real love, then. A mere trick. A swindle.”

Miss Maple grunted. “You can leave, then. Lady G doesn’t need your blunt.”

“No, no.” Scholarly skepticism fled when confronted with retreating opportunity. “I’ve heard enough—gossip, you see—to know… I need hers.”

“Then as I was saying, you’ll think you’re in love. That is until you—”

“Piss it out.”

“Precisely, miss.” Miss Maple grinned. “Now, tell me about the man you wish to love you.”

“Oh, I do not want him to love me.”

Miss Maple’s jaw unhinged then cranked slowly back into place. “But… then who?”