Chapter 13 #2
“Even if that’s accurate”—though in truth, he seemed like a perfectly competent alchemy student, based on my limited interactions with him in class—“isn’t it against the rules to borrow other students’ space and supplies without permission?”
Wilder gave me an odd look, coupled with a strangely soft, quiet smile. “What use have I for rules, when it is results that matter?”
“That sounds like a quotation. Are you referencing a textbook?”
“A walking textbook, of sorts.” His smile seemed to…sadden. “I am quoting the great Amber Katherine Fallbrook, alchemy student extraordinaire.”
“I said that?”
Wilder nodded. “As often as you said ‘Good morning, Wilder. You’re looking particularly virile and attractive today.’ Which, in case it wasn’t clear, was quite often.”
I laughed. But the sound faded when I glanced across all three occupied tables. “What time do the other students usually arrive?”
“Not until after morning tea, which is served an hour later on the weekend.” He glanced through the window, clearly judging the quality of the light.
“We have around three hours, by my best guess. And that’s perfect, because I have just finished with your station and am now free to show you how to clean the equipment and set everything up fresh. ”
“You say that as if it’s part of the favor you’re doing me, yet I feel as if I’ve been manipulated into doing your chores for you, as when we were children.”
“I never manipulated you!” he declared as he began corking the open vials suspended on iron frames on my workstation. “Grab the colophony, will you? Third vial from the right, on the storage shelf.”
Colophony, I thought, taking advantage of the opportunity to quiz myself on recently relearned vocabulary. Tree resin often used for airtight sealing of glass vessels.
“You never…” I scoffed as I proffered the requested vial.
“I’m afraid the facts are on my side,” Wilder insisted with a cheeky grin. “Your memory is demonstrably faulty, and my recollection of the situation is that you wanted to help me with my menial obligations so I could accompany you to the pond for swimming.”
An image flashed in my mind of Wilder, standing in the local pond, naked from the waist up and glistening. We’d been sixteen or so, and water—
—runs down Desmond’s scowling face in a dozen rivulets, dripping from the thick length of his lashes. Dangling from his nose and the hard line of his clenched jaw.
I laugh, going up on my toes. My tongue darts out to catch the drop threatening to fall from his chin, and before I can lower myself again, his hands catch around my waist, holding me in place while his mouth crashes down over mine.
Desmond tastes like tea, and iced sweetbread, and like the cold, fresh rain pouring over us in the dark, drenching my hair and sweetening our kiss, making me shiver against the warmth of his body pressing the length of mine.…
I finally pull away, breathing hard, my hands clutching around damp handfuls of his cloak. Heat blossoms low in my belly, an aching hunger that food could never satisfy. But when I look up, his copper- brown eyes have brightened into a sparkling cerulean.…
“Amber?”
I blinked and found Wilder staring at me, a beaker evidently forgotten in his grip.
“What happened? Are you okay?”
Not even a little bit. Was that a memory? Had one slipped between the bars of its cell, or had the jailer released one poor, emaciated scrap of a recollection just to toy with me? It wasn’t accurate. It couldn’t be. Brown eyes don’t just become blue.
Would it do me any good to have my memory back, if it could not be trusted?
“I’m fine,” I lied. “Just tired. How are you so alert, having been up all night? I can hardly keep my eyes open.”
“Try a swig of that moss-green solution, on the far table.”
I followed his glance to Lennox’s workstation, where I’d noticed two solutions cooling. “Why? What is it?”
“It’s an elixir of concentration. It will keep you alert, as if you’ve had four cups of tea, while it enhances your ability to focus on the task at hand.”
I stared at the vial, yet another of the distinctive flat-bottomed variety, frowning at the clear liquid. “You made this?”
“I made it, I consumed it, and I will offer it for purchase.”
“To whom?”
Wilder shrugged. “Several of the staff members, when they’re approaching a deadline and aren’t pleased with their results. There aren’t enough hours in the day left for them, so they must steal hours from the night.”
“Like you do,” I murmured.
“Precisely. And I’m not the only one. Lennox has bought a few doses, over the past year.”
Understanding flared like a torch, burning off a bit of my own naivety. “You run a business,” I said. “In secret. And those students, from the first day of class? The ones who accosted you in the hallway? They’re your customers?”
“They are among my customers.” He watched me carefully, assessing my reaction.
“Lennox Pettifog is one of them?”
“Occasionally. I have to be careful when I offer him an elixir of concentration, though, because when he takes it, he stays in here for hours, and I can’t get anything done myself.”
“Because you need…secrecy?”
“My business requires an absence of prying eyes, yes.” Wilder returned to my station, empty-handed, and began disassembling an alembic for cleaning.
“What grade are these?”
“That is difficult to say, because there are no grade scales on record for these particular, original formulas.” He gave me a saucy wink. “Though, naturally, I’d guess based on efficacy that they’re professional grade, at least.”
“Of course you would.” I knelt to examine his vials from eye level.
“The elixir won’t hurt you. You have my word. I would never give you anything that would harm you, Amber.”
His eye contact was direct and open. It hid nothing.
“I know. Thank you.”
I started to politely turn down the offer anyway, leery of potential side effects and possible insomnia. But then I thought about how much I still had to learn, and how few hours I had left before the first trial.
“Thank you,” I repeated as I reached for the vial.
“No!” Wilder lurched forward and snatched it before my fingers had more than brushed the warm surface of the glass. “That’s fern green. I said to sip from the moss green.” He tossed his head toward the other vial.
Perhaps someone with a botany affinity would have known the difference?
My heart leapt into my throat, startled by the mistake I’d almost made, even though I had no real conception of it. “Why? What is the fern green?”
Wilder looked embarrassed for one fleeting moment. Then he visibly shook off that impulse and grinned. Deliberately. Widely. As if he were trying as hard to convince himself of his amusement as he was to convince me. “This is a special elixir, for Professor Robards.”
“My boss, Professor Robards?”
“Indeed. Perhaps you’ve noticed that he pulls his curls back to cover a thinning spot on his scalp?”
I had noticed, but…“How is that any of your business?”
“It’s my business, precisely because it is business. He’s in the market for a hair-loss remedy, though that isn’t the only measure he takes to ward against age-related infirmities.” Wilder waggled the vial, and its contents sloshed softly within.
I had the distinct impression I was supposed to understand the purpose of the elixir. “Is it for his joints? Do they trouble him?”
Wilder laughed, his head thrown back, eyes crinkled with true amusement. “An aching bone is his problem,” he conceded when he’d calmed enough to speak. “But likely not whichever one you’re thinking of. Professor Robards needs an elixir to allow him to perform.”
I blinked at him.
“For his wife,” Wilder added. After a further pause, he sighed. “In their marital bed ? Because without it, no one tells him how distinctly virile and attractive he looks, at his age.”
My brow rose as comprehension finally dawned. “You’ve made an elixir to help him…rise to the occasion?”
“Precisely. And not for the first time.”
“How?” I demanded with a glance at his notes. There weren’t a dozen words in total on any single page. No formulas at all. They were more like…reminders. Hints that only Wilder would understand. “How do you know how to make such a thing?”
“Trial and error, mostly. More error than anything, in this case. I stumbled upon the formula a year and a half ago, when I was trying for a different kind of stimulant entirely.” His grin grew more heated.
“Imagine my bewilderment when an attempt to solve a more innocuous social malady led, instead, to an entirely different manner of…affliction. Although I hesitate to characterize that particular condition as an adversity.”
“You took this elixir yourself?”
“Who else am I meant to test it on?” His grin crinkled the corner of his eyes pleasantly as he leaned closer to whisper, “I will say, even when the result misses the mark a bit, I am generally quite pleased with the outcome of any endeavor in the lab. And that time was no exception.” He winked.
“Despite every attempt to remedy the situation, I missed three classes. Otherwise, I would have made quite the public spectacle.”
I blinked at him. Then I burst into laughter, even as I flushed from head to toe at the mental image of Wilder walking around campus with a distinctive bulge in the front of his robe.
And thoughts of what his attempts to “remedy” the situation might entail.
Had I been involved?
“What was the original ‘social malady’?” I asked, a grin lingering on my face.
His own smile faded at the reminder. “I…It doesn’t matter.”
“It might,” I insisted, shifting uncomfortably on my feet as I tried to come up with a tactful way to explain my concern. “If this is an ailment we shared, due to…evidently…the nature of our relationship. This ‘social malady.’ ”