Chapter 7 A Whole Alchemist #2
He laughed. “Surprisingly, that’s not what I’m after. I’m here for your skill. I want you to teach me how to do alchemy.”
“Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t. I’m unmarried. You’re unmarried. It’s a scandal. I’d be ruined.”
“Your family is already ruined,” he said, slouching into the seat and spreading his legs wide, which spread his fading skirts wide.
“Ruined with one half of London only. I cannot afford to lose the other half.”
“You don’t need them.” He looked out the window. “Unless you have plans to marry?”
“It’s none of your business whether I plan to marry or not.”
“You do then.”
“No! Not precisely.” She couldn’t find the right words, felt wiggly and too confined.
“If I met the right man… I should like to marry. If I travel with you, I lose that possibility. No man will have me.” As if he didn’t know that already.
His lot—transcendents—made the rules and policed them.
The problem was he clearly did not care.
The problem was he was a man, and the rules didn’t apply to him. Ever.
He snorted. “Then you shouldn’t have him.”
She opened her mouth to say… something. Whatever it was died on her tongue. “Are you… complimenting me?”
He leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his thighs.
The boredom she’d sensed in him when he’d been gazing out the window dropped away like a dying glamour, revealing reality.
His blue eyes were bright, intense. Like the blue flames they’d conjured between them in the potion shop.
“What I mean is you’re a bold woman, and any man who wants you, but refuses to have you with a little…
excitement in your past, is not bold enough to deserve you. ”
He was complimenting her, whether he intended to or not. It clearly made him uncomfortable to do so. His cheeks were rose red, and he wouldn’t meet her gaze.
“Thank you,” she said.
“Don’t do that,” he growled, looking out the window once more.
“Do what?”
“Pretend I’m worth your gratitude.” He hung his head between his hands then looked up at her from behind a rakish lock of hair.
“We can hire a new chaperone. I’ll travel as a groom, stay at Foggy Hill as a groom, too.
No one will recognize me. It’s been decades since I was there.
I don’t even remember it. My grandfather preferred his properties along the southern shoreline.
More sunlight. What I’m saying is no one has to know.
If remaining innocent and pure in truth and in reputation is so important to you and whatever beef-witted alchemist you plan to marry, then”—he leaned into the squabs, crossing his arms over his chest, looking grumpy as a small child denied a treat—“I’ll travel disguised.
No one has to know.” His face brightened a bit. “Might be diverting after all.”
How tempting.
No! It was utterly ridiculous.
“Why?” she demanded. “Why would you purposefully ride off into obscurity with me?”
He slipped his hand through the glamour and pulled out a small metal rod, narrower on one end. “Because of this.” Into the pocket and out again, this time revealing the long, misshapen disk of gold. “And this.”
On his palm, the iron and gold were small and heavy at the same time. Sybil felt as if their weight dragged the coach’s wheels into the dirt, made time move more slowly.
“Stone asked me to spy for him.” He spoke softly, gazing, as she was, at his palm, the objects cradled there. “To use my connection to your family to find out where you are—”
“I knew it!”
“You know nothing. I don’t want to tell him where you are.
He’s offered me money, a real and influential position in the Guild.
But all of it without mastering a single basic element of alchemy.
It’s power. But hollow. I want something real.
And you, Sybil Grant, are the only one who can give it to me. ”
She ventured a look, a hesitant peek upward and into his face. The fine lines of it were sharp, and the brightening morning outside the coach threw shadows in the hollows of his cheeks. She could not read his eyes. The flames there doused, replaced with something deadly serious.
Give this man power?
Seemed a dangerous thing to do.
He grasped her hand, pulled it over his, atop the iron and gold.
They were palm to palm and eye to eye, and his words seemed like coals dropping into her chest. “You teach me alchemy, and I’ll teach you.
Everything I’ve learned and observed from a year in Stone’s forge.
I know more than I’m capable of doing. And you’re capable of doing more than you know.
Together”—he squeezed her hand between his, a gentle thing yet full of lightning—“we can make a whole alchemist.” The corner of his mouth quirked into a lopsided grin.
How tempting. Letting him stay, allowing this rogue to travel with her… it felt like bolt cutters in her hands. She couldn’t escape this fate, but she could defy it in some small way.
She wet her lips. “You’ll tell me everything?”
“Every little thing. I swear it.”
“Fine.”
“Fine as in…?”
She pursed her lips. This was it. This was stepping off a cliff and into the unknown. If she agreed, it could change everything. Something tugged at the corners of her lips.
“I need the words, princess.”
She turned away from him to hide a smile. “Fine you can travel with me.”
“I knew you’d see sense!” He launched backward into the squabs, a wild grin bold across his face. “I’ll pretend I’m your groom. Perhaps I should get rid of the coachman. A hammer to the head. No, a love potion—”
“No, no. Nothing overly intricate. We’ll get caught.”
“What’s your plan then?”
“Since no one where we’re going knows you, you’ll travel as my brother, Hesperus. We’ll tell the driver you’re acting as my guard. A last-minute change Temple must have forgotten to mention.”
“Not bad. You’re a natural at machinations.”
“No one will remark on siblings traveling together and…” Her throat dried. “We can visit one another’s bedchambers.”
“Well, well, well.” He folded his hands behind his head. “I hadn’t thought to be invited to your bed, but I accept.”
“Not to my bed, Chester. To my fire.”
“Same thing?”
“Not at all. We need a flame to practice alchemy. Nothing more. Do you understand?”
He shrugged, sighed loudly. “I suppose.”
“Not suppose. Swear it. Swear you won’t try to… try to…”
“Seduce you?”
“Yes, that. Swear to me you’ll behave like a gentleman, foreign concept though I know it is for you.”
“I could swear it, and you wouldn’t believe me.”
True. But… “You told me about Stone, about spying on me for him. I take that as an offering of peace. You didn’t have to tell me that. Thank you. In exchange for that truth, Chester, I’ll trust your word, should you give it now that you will not try to—”
“Seduce you?”
“You enjoy saying that far too much, I fear.”
He laughed. “I give you my word, Sybil Grant. I will not try to seduce you. But could you try to call me Apollo?” He shivered. “I truly cannot stand Chester.”
“When I’m not calling you Hesperus, I’ll try.”
“Excellent.” He held out a hand. “Truce?”
She clasped it. “Truce.”
“This is going to be an excellent partnership.”
She hoped so. Because it was several other things—mad, ill-advised, and ruinous. But if he was right, and they could learn from one another…
Together, we can make a whole alchemist.
Then it would be worth all that and more.