“I am not going to England!” I exclaimed.
“Thea has a father in England she does not know, and who does not know she exists,” said my mother, as though I had not spoken. “He is no use to us.”
“What do you mean, he does not know she exists?” the Comte demanded. “You swore to me you would write to him of her! I saw you seal the envelope!”
“I sealed it, but did not send it,” said my mother. “I had no need to, once Phillipe sent word of his plans.”
Adrien slammed his fist onto the table, sending the glasses and silver rattling. The Marquis seized his wine with both hands to keep it steady, his eyes wide with shock.
“Marguerite!” Adrien thundered. “Thea is not going to England with this man!”
I stared at him. I had never heard him raise his voice to my mother, or give her an order. He was finished now. Mother might not be leaving France, but she would certainly be leaving him. These were lines no man could cross and keep any part of my mother’s affections. Still, I was grateful.
“No,” I agreed fervently. “I am not.”
The Marquis pushed back his chair from the table, lips quivering with outrage. But instead of placating him, my mother leaned past him toward me, ignoring him completely. Venom sharpened her glassy-eyed stare.
“You will go where I tell you,” she hissed. “With whom I tell you to go! Do you think you know better than I what is best for you? I protect you! But for me, you would have thrown your virtue away on that libertine—”
“I would not!” I exclaimed, my face aflame. “And Will is not a libertine, he is an alchemist!”
“You foolish child, you think you know more than I of men?”
“Not of men,” I said. “But of Will, yes! You only hated him because he defended me from you!”
“Defended you?” My mother stood. Her cheeks were scarlet with rage, her eyes wild. “He turned you against me with flattery, and you were too stupid to see it! No alchemist who knew anything would say you were ready for your own laboratory!”
“And that was why you really threw him out, wasn’t it?” I exclaimed, rising from my own chair as well. “Because he dared to suggest I did not need you, that I might even be better than you!”
“That was when I knew he was a liar!” Her eyes were strangely dark, pupils flaring, and her arms shook as she gripped the table. The Marquis stared at her, aghast, and so did I. She never lost control like this, not before a guest. “No one would say something so absurd without a sinister purpose! He thought to seduce you and steal my secrets through you!”
My breath caught. I shook my head, my mouth twitching and twisting around a denial.
“You thought he wanted you for yourself, I know it,” snarled my mother. “But I saw you together. You were as clumsy as a giraffe and as blunt as a bull! You have no charm for men—it is why I have no fear of sending you with the Marquis!”
“Marguerite!” exclaimed the Comte. “You are being cruel!”
“I will take my leave now, Marguerite,” said the Marquis stiffly. “I will not stay where I am so clearly not wanted. But if you should ever find yourself in need of assistance—”
My mother blinked at him, chest heaving, as if she had forgotten he was there. And somehow she had, surely, or she would never have spoken this way in front of him when she still wished to win a favor. After a long, dead moment, she held out her hand, which the Marquis bent over hastily.
I sat down again, rooted to my chair. I did not look at the Marquis as he left. My eyes and throat burned. Adrien was right. She was being cruel, and needlessly so, when it didn’t even suit her ends. When the Marquis was gone, she turned, trembling, back to me.
“See what you’ve done, Thea!” she exclaimed. “Can you never control your tongue?”
“My tongue?”
“If you had not argued politics with him—”
“You were the one screaming how stupid and charmless I am!”
“Who will take you now?”
“No one!” I cried. “Because I am not leaving! Do you think I do not know why you wish to send me away? But I will not let you, not when we are near to making the White Elixir! I will not be erased from our achievement!”
My mother gripped the table, bending over it. She was damp and trembling. She shook her head. She was ill, there was no other explanation for it all. The Comte saw it and stepped toward her in alarm.
“No, Thea,” she said. “You are wrong, entirely wrong. I do not want to send you away at all. It is only for your sake … for your safety…”
“I am not afraid of the National Convention.” I forced the words through my closing throat. I swallowed. I would not cry.
My mother shook her head. “The Revolution is not the only danger,” she said in a trembling voice.
“What then?” I asked.
She glanced into the corner again and looked away quickly. Again I looked where she looked. Again, nothing.
“Tell me, Mother.” My voice broke. I wanted an explanation more than I could bear to admit. I needed a reason, a good enough one to excuse her for banishing me.
But she did not answer, and so I turned my head away and left.
The Comte called after me, but I could bear to talk to him even less than I could bear to talk to my mother. Whatever my mother had left to say might make me angrier. Adrien’s sympathy would surely make me cry.
3
I lay on my bed in my shift, under the open window, breathing in the twilight scent of apple blossoms and swallowing angry sobs. I had cast off my green dress and left it and its ridiculous panniers where they lay. The warm spring air had turned cold with the sunset, and the fire burned down in the hearth, giving off little warmth. The hairs on my arms stood on end from the chill, but I didn’t feel it. My mind and heart were raging hot.
I could not stand it. I could not believe it. But I could not deny it.
My mother wanted to send me away.
It was worse than I had thought, worse even than Will had thought. She did not simply want to keep me subordinate to her, or keep me from sharing credit once we made the White Elixir, the substance that turned all metal into silver, the last step before the Philosopher’s Stone. Will thought she wanted to keep me for herself, to refuse to let me come into my own. But no. She did not want me at all.
Will …
It wasn’t true, what she had said, that he was only using me to get to her secrets. It couldn’t be true. She said she’d watched us together, but she hadn’t seen everything. She hadn’t seen him open himself to me, tell me about his parents’ rejection of him, his hopes for a more equal world. She hadn’t seen the way he’d looked at me before he kissed me. Still, her voice rang in my head.
You were as clumsy as a giraffe, and blunt as a bull!
I knotted my fists in the delicate white lace of my coverlet and felt it tear.
I threw myself off the bed, went to my dressing table, and opened my letter box. I lit a lamp and pulled all the letters out, searching frantically for the one that would disprove my mother best.
I found it, dated eight months ago, when Will was just settling into his contract in Prussia. I quickly scanned the first paragraphs, detailing the work and setting, and came to what I was looking for.