But Will. He laughed like it came from the loud, bursting core of him. Like he couldn’t have kept it in if he wanted to, and why would he want to? And when he was done laughing, he would look at me like no one else ever had. Like he saw only me, not as an accessory to my mother, but as myself. And not as an odd girl whose sharp edges would need to be softened. Will liked the edges. The sharper they cut, the more they delighted him.
“Thea!”
I threw my letters into the letter box and snapped it shut. I looked around for somewhere to hide the box, and noticed too late that one of my crumpled drafts had blown toward the stream. My mother appeared on the hill above me, the late afternoon sun lighting up her golden hair like an unearned halo. She walked down the hill with measured steps and stopped a few yards above me, I assumed because she wished to enjoy the experience of being taller than me again for a few moments. Her eye moved to the crumpled paper. I ran to it and stuffed it into my pocket before she could take it, though my haste in hiding the failed letter told her all I didn’t wish her to know.
“Oh dear,” said my mother. “I do hope you haven’t been wasting your afternoon trying to find the right words to say to that boy.”
My mother was tolerant of my letter writing these days, perhaps because she was confident I would never see Will again. She had smiled when she heard of Will’s contract in Prussia. He won’t find it so easy to charm his way past the Prussian alchemy laws. In Germany, one must deliver results, not pretty smiles, or end in prison.
“I wouldn’t have an afternoon to waste if you would let me into the laboratory,” I said.
“Don’t be pitiful, Thea,” said my mother. “Surely you can think of something worthwhile to do when I don’t happen to need your assistance.”
I clenched my teeth so tight that my jaw ached. Shutting me out of the laboratory, our laboratory, was the greatest injustice she had ever committed against me. Worse than all the moving about, worse than sending Will away, worse than any insult she could think to level at me. Before she had done that, I believed we were together in alchemy at least, even if nothing else. That she had raised and trained me not simply to be of use to her, but to be her partner. Her equal, one day. Throwing me out of the laboratory just when we might achieve what we had worked for told me that Will was right. She would never let me claim credit for my part of the work. She would never accept me as an alchemist in my own right.
And yet she described it as though she had simply let me off my chores. As if I were no more necessary than a servant. There was no point in arguing with her, but even so I could not let it stand.
“I am not your assistant,” I said.
“Oh?” she asked. “Do you have news, then? Have you found a patron on your own merits? Do you intend to strike out on your own?”
“Perhaps I will,” I said, my face growing hot. “Perhaps I will stay here when you are finally finished tormenting the poor Comte.”
My mother had a perfect, deceptively sweet beauty: golden blond and blue-eyed with a round, doll-like face. It made the venom that sometimes twisted her expression hard to quite believe in. Many men simply didn’t. They preferred to ignore the evidence of their minds for the evidence of their senses. I, of course, knew her better than they did. I tensed, preparing.
But instead of lashing out, my mother turned aside, a hand to her chest. A tremor passed over her; she bowed her head against it.
Mother had been strangely unwell for weeks. At first I responded to her illness as she had taught me to, with distaste and disapproval, as though falling sick were an ill-considered pastime of those with insufficient moral fortitude. But if she noticed how unpleasant it was to receive so little sympathy when unwell, she did not show it. She had locked herself away in the laboratory every day until late at night, ignoring my silence as much as she ignored the Comte’s pleas that she rest. I had not thought much of it until this moment. Any pain great enough to turn her from chastising me for thinking I could do alchemy without her must be serious indeed.
“Mother?” I asked.
“You will go where I tell you.” Her voice was low and breathless, almost a gasp. “For now, that is to dinner. Wear the green taffeta.”
“The robe à la française?” I asked, perplexed. I hadn’t worn that dress since before the Estates General met. Its style was the hallmark of the ancien régime: wide panniered hips, structured bodice, and elaborate flounces. “But it’s out of fashion.”
“So is our guest,” said my mother.
She went up the hill again, then turned back to me at the top.
“Thea,” she said, all the sharpness gone from her voice. “I know you do not believe it any longer, but everything I do is for you.”
It was the sort of thing she always said. Before this year, I had always believed it, more or less. At least, everything she did was for the both of us. She had considered me an extension of herself, so that doing things for me was no different than doing them for herself. Why else take so much care to train me, to see to it that I had the tutors I needed to learn every language necessary—more even than she knew? To take me with her in all her travels to seek out manuscripts? She was an impatient teacher at times, but a good one. A thorough one. And in turn I was a good student. The best.
Until we were close to our goal. Then, suddenly, I was a rival. And my mother did not tolerate rivals.
“You are right, Mother,” I said. “I don’t believe that any longer.”
2
It was an ongoing project of mine to learn when I could give in to my mother without loathing myself, and when to fight the battle that came of defying her. I decided this was one of the former cases, and put on the green taffeta gown.
My mother was dressed lavishly as well, though not in the old-fashioned style she had instructed me to wear. She sat on the gold-gilt sofa in airy blue silk, sipping a glass of Madeira and smiling radiantly at our out-of-fashion guest. He stood as I entered and bowed low. My mother introduced him as the Marquis Phillipe du Blevy. His powdered wig, silk breeches, and waistcoat were courtly, ostentatious, and opulent. Much like my own gown. Together we made a perfect picture of unrepentant French aristocracy. An inaccurate picture, since I was in fact an expatriate English girl, neither French nor an aristocrat.
“Your daughter?” he exclaimed, when my mother introduced me. “Ma chère, can it be so? You are not old enough!”
My mother smiled. Unlike many French ladies, she never lied about her age, though no one would ever believe she was well past thirty were it not for the irrefutable evidence of my existence. A nearly adult daughter put even the youngest mother near middle age. Her perfect, girlish skin was carefully maintained by alchemical cosmetics of her own making—a testament to her skill, which she valued more than her youth. My mother had sold these cosmetics to the Queen herself, when the Queen was still free to make her own purchases.
We were called to dinner before the Comte arrived. It must have been on my mother’s instructions. The servants would certainly not have thought to begin dinner without their master on their own. It confirmed my suspicion that the Marquis was here at my mother’s invitation, as a possible new patron.
We clustered around one end of the long table, yards and yards of bone-white linen extending down before us. It was odd to sit so few at a table so obviously designed for many. I had eaten here only a handful of times since we came. Usually we ate in the morning room, at a reasonably sized table. I eyed the Marquis du Blevy with dislike while he occupied himself with charming my mother. Comte Adrien’s general good character and relatively liberal sentiments about the poor sometimes made it difficult to accept Will’s revolutionary opinions about the aristocracy. The Marquis, on the other hand, was exactly as dandified and pretentious as any Jacobin caricature. He was not as old as his elaborate powdered wig made him look at first. Older than the Comte, yes, but perhaps still in his forties. He was not nearly as attractive as my mother’s usual patrons—a testament, perhaps, to the reduced pool of options. Nor was he a frequent patron of alchemists, so far as I knew. But my mother had turned more than one rich man with no natural interest in alchemy into a fervent supporter of herself. Judging from the way the Marquis looked at her, she would have no trouble doing the same with him.