Chapter 19 Miss Darcy Invades #2
The moment we entered the lab, she gave a besotted oh and ran to touch everything.
Miss Darcy is different to what I expected.
I remember her as rather a shy, self-effacing creature, made of quick, energetic movements and bright black eyes.
Half the time she hovered on her toes as though about to take off into the air at the first sight of danger.
She put me in mind of Cariad, the way she darted about.
It has only been eight months or so, but she is nothing like that now.
There is something almost indecent about a woman so confident.
I am sure that Quindley would not approve.
She is neither modest nor meek. When she looks at me I feel a bit like a dormouse must when the falcon’s eye falls upon it.
She ran her fingers over my many-colored phials like they were jewels. I admit I enjoyed the ooh ing and aah ing. I have never had anyone to appreciate my little nest before.
“How cunning!” she said, regarding my collection of animal skulls, which adorned the sill. “Did you collect them yourself?”
I nodded. “Unfortunately, I cannot clean them easily. The process is foul-smelling and I fear I would be discovered. I have had to restrict myself to dry bones that will fit in my pocket.”
She hummed a little in sympathy. “I shall bring you more if you like. I am always finding mouse skulls. Oh! Is that what I think?”
She dropped to her knees before the complicated apparatus that resides in the corner. It looks a bit like a chandelier, with a central column tied to a ring of glass vessels, only instead of candles, they hold leeches. She stroked her fingers reverently along the glass of one chamber.
“It is a tempest—”
“Tempest prognosticator,” she finished with me. “I have read of the theory, but I did not know there was more than one ever built.”
“So far as I know, mine is only the second. I had to begin to keep leeches, you know, for the apothecary’s niece says I must replenish her stock. So I thought I may as well kill two birds with one stone. See, when the leeches climb above the marked line, it means there is a storm coming.”
“Does it work?”
“Not perfectly, but there is a positive correlation.”
She trailed her fingers over the glass. “It’s beautiful. When you said you had put those glasses I sent to good use, I had no idea.”
The glasses had, indeed, been a gift from Herr Holzmann, sent care of the apothecary and smuggled into my house one at a time. My whole brain seemed to lurch a little as I remembered that this girl was Holzmann.
“Thank you again for those.”
“Not at all. I wish I’d sent twice as many.” Her nose was almost pressed against one of the glasses now, home to one of the largest leeches. She tapped a fingernail on the glass. “What’s this fine fellow’s name?”
“I do not name them.”
“Then I shall. He looks like a Barnabas to me.” She sat back with a sigh. “Oh, Mary, this place. You are a lucky girl.”
I stared. I was a lucky girl? When compared with this exotic creature, who wore what she liked and went where she liked and had a fortune all her own? “Would your brother not give you a laboratory?”
She sighed again. “I am afraid he would,” she said. “But I think it would cause him pain, so I shan’t ask. He does so wish I was more like other girls.” Fancy being so rich you could not ask for things for fear you might get them.
“Are you not?” I asked.
“Not what?”
“Like other girls. To me, you seem…” Ordinary was not quite the right word. Not for that fine intellect, that extravagant wardrobe, those magnetic eyes. “Sufficient across all categories.”
She looked wry. “Why, thank you. You ought to write love poems, Miss Mary. You have such a lovely way of speaking. What rhymes with sufficient across all categories ?”
“I-I did not mean… I only meant…” My face was going hot. I was ruining things already. “Let us go back downstairs. It is late.”
“No, wait.” She grabbed my hand, anchoring me in place. “I’m sorry. This is what comes of trying to be ordinary. I was trying to be witty and bantery, but the truth is I hate bantering. Half the time it is just nastiness, anyhow.”
“I hate it, too.” Her hand felt just like I would have expected—soft skin, with strong, elegant fingers enclosing my own. I felt quite sure that her hand could span an octave or more on the piano.
“Good. Let’s forswear it. No more social cleverness between us. All our cleverness shall be reserved for things that matter.”
“Agreed,” I said, and cleared my throat. I could not remember the last time someone had apologized for mocking me. My eyes actually swam for a moment. Absurd. I blinked the tears back hard. Most likely the dust in the attic merely caused some irritation of my internal ducts.
This discomfort was a good reminder. I had to get her out of here.
“Now go on, back to bed with you, please. I’ve work to do.”
“I’ll help you.”
“No, thank you. Unless you wish to be in the company of a gentleman while wearing your nightclothes, I suggest you go.”
“The company of a—?” She opened and closed her mouth. “To whom do you refer? Anyway, what about you? You’re in your nightdress.”
“Yes, well, I made him, which makes us as good as family, I think.”
“Made him? You mean—Mary, what on earth is going on?”
Through the floor I heard the clock in the library strike two. “Go!”
It was too late. Above us, the window creaked open. Heavy boots thumped down the ladder. Pike dropped into the pool of lamplight.
“Good evening,” he said. “Miss Darcy, this is a pleasant surprise.”
“Miss Darcy is Holzmann,” I explained.
Pike’s jaw dropped, then he laughed. “What! Him too? A good joke, that! Like something from a stage comedy.”
“You have heard of our correspondence, then,” she said coldly.
“Oh, yes. Miss Bennet and I have had a great deal of time to converse this summer.”
He bowed to her. Miss Darcy returned it automatically, her eyes never leaving him. She turned wordlessly to me.
How on earth to explain? I decided I would rather not. Ignoring her, I turned to Pike. “Good hunting?”
He smiled. “Yes, very. Wait till you see my catch.” He reached into the sack over his shoulder. Behind me I felt Miss Darcy flinch.
He drew out a length of cloth. Even in the dim light of the lantern the colors made me gasp. He turned it this way and that, and the folds turned from deep purple to dark blue and back again. “Shot silk,” he explained. “The better to display two of our dyes rather than one. What do you think?”
I took it and looked it over. “Rather gaudy for my taste, but it does display the colors well.”
He nodded. “Old Jenkins of Manchester has a silk factory. He’s offered to buy all we can make of these dyes. He believes they’ll be a sensation.”
“Good prices?”
“Very.”
“I can do five of each per month.”
“Eight would be better.”
“Impossible.”
“If you would let me make some of them—”
“I had rather do it myself.”
“Yes, so I expected. I told Jenkins five.”
“Excellent. No long-term contract, I hope?”
“No, month to month. We’ll be dying our own fabrics soon enough.”
Miss Darcy’s eyes were darting back and forth between us, getting huger and huger. Pike turned to her with a slight bow. “I am sorry for all this dull business talk,” he said. “I confess I did not expect to see you here.”
“Nor I you, I assure you,” she said. “Er—I thought the dyes had strong effects if exposed to heat? Suppose some dress or kerchief were to fall in the fire?”
“Miss Bennet has changed her process. The chromae no longer have that effect when in dye form.”
“Ah,” she said.
“Yes, well,” I said. “As Pike said, our business is rather dull. Do not let us keep you from your bed.”
“I am not easily bored.”
They stared at each other. Each, I realized, was waiting for the other to withdraw.
Pike sighed. “Very well. Let’s get on with it.”
“Miss Darcy—”
“No, no, Miss Bennet, she can stay.”
So I got out my notes and my mixing bowl, and I went to work.
Miss Darcy retreated into the corner between my cabinet and the tempest prognosticator.
Away from the lamplight, she was little more than shadows on shadows and two glittering eyes.
She watched as I interrogated Pike on his condition, noted down his answers, and then mixed a new batch.
Cyan, magenta, red, black, and at Pike’s suggestion a bit more red—I measured them all into the bowl carefully, noting down the proportions. Then I gave it to Pike.
“Your health, ladies,” he said, raising the bowl to us. Then he drank deeply. When he’d drained the last dregs, he patted away the last few red-black droplets with a clean handkerchief.
He produced three stoppered bottles of blood, each neatly labeled in Miss Figg’s crabbed writing. Then he bowed to us both, climbed the ladder, and vanished into the night.
The instant he was gone, Miss Darcy whirled to face me. “What on earth?” She grabbed my notes and rifled through them.
I swallowed. “Well, if you had just allowed me a little time to write you back, instead of flying here with practically no warning—”
“What on earth ?”
“—I’d have told you not to come, I’d have told you that Pike is quite well now—”
“ Quite well? ” She seized a bit of marking chalk from the table and stalked to the wall. Notes in one hand, chalk in the other, and began to draw a graph. “Your first batch lasted fifteen days. The next, thirteen. The next thirteen as well, then fourteen, then twelve.”
“Yes, we’ve been perfecting the recipe—”
“Perfecting the recipe!” she laughed. “Can you really be so blind? Look, look at this.” And she drew a great, swooping arc down through the marks on the wall.
I stared. “It’s—no. It cannot be.”
“It is. It’s decaying. His medicine’s effectiveness grows shorter and shorter.”
I drew closer to the graph. Setting aside the slight variations as I altered the recipe, the trend was unmistakable. How had I not seen it?
“But if that continues—”