Page 7 of The Love Remedy (The Damsels of Discovery #1)

7

“Maybe it were for a magical spell. Didn’t believe crocodiles existed till Mr. Peterson showed me a drawing of one,” Katie said.

“I’ve never seen a drawing of one, but I’ve read about them,” Sadie replied. The two of them stood side by side, peering down into the empty drawer that had once contained crocodile dung.

Although Katie was at least fifteen, she wasn’t much taller than Sadie. Thorne watched the two girls speak and cataloged a variety of differences between the two. Alongside the most obvious difference in the color of their skin—Sadie’s bronze skin glowed in the low light next to Katie’s bluish-white pallor—Sadie was dressed as a young lady of her age, her teeth were straight and white, her diction of the upper classes. Katie, although years older, wore day dresses too short for her spindly legs, hair piled in a topknot like a young woman, but had the same interest in mysterious poo as a girl much younger than her.

Unless it was that all girls had a fascination with poo?

Thorne considered this question as he turned away from the girls and went into the office, staring at the desk.

Someone had gone through the papers last night or early this morning after he and Lucy had gone upstairs, he was sure of it. The lock showed no signs of scratches, so that someone had a key. When he’d opened the door this morning to look for his spectacles, he’d noticed a few papers askew from their neat piles.

“We want to make a good impression with Madame Mensonge,” Sadie piped up from behind him. She and Katie must have abandoned the never-boring subject of crocodile scat. The wavering of her voice caught his attention.

Thorne set a hand on her head and tried to think of what to say to put her at ease, but another voice offered consolation.

“Madame Mensonge will be overjoyed to have such a delightful new pupil. And you can be sure that the girls will be nice.” Juliet stood in the doorway of the office, regarding Sadie with pleasure.

“Lucy told me you were going to visit the school,” she said. “I loved every minute of my time there, and I’m certain you will as well.”

Some of the tightness around Sadie’s eyes eased, and Thorne cupped her cheek.

“There now, you must listen to Miss Juliet. If any of the girls are not nice, they are not girls you want to be friends with.”

“I should change my ribbons.”

Thorne could not find voice to make a silly joke about ladies who forever changed their minds when Sadie rushed out of the room.

“I shouldn’t have said that about other girls,” he said, eyes on the door.

Juliet regarded him in silence until he glanced her way.

“Have girls not always been nice to her?” she asked.

A father always finds his daughters beautiful, or so Thorne assumed, so he allowed that Sadie might not be the prettiest girl in London, but it was close. She was also bright and kind and distressingly adept at guessing other people’s feelings.

“It’s not enough to counter the prejudice of some against her mixed race, or the fact that I never married her mother,” Thorne explained as he finished his recitation of Sadie’s attributes.

Tilting her head as though listening to a third voice, Juliet nodded.

“You have the right of it,” she said. “Those girls who cannot befriend her are not the girls she needs as friends, but they may be the very girls she wants as friends.”

“Girls are hard.”

Without a shred of sympathy, Juliet agreed.

Thorne recentered a pile of papers at the corner of the desk and took a chance.

“Did you find the documents you were looking for last night?”

His voice could no longer reach a high enough range to make that sound like an innocent inquiry, and Thorne wasn’t surprised when Juliet’s eyes narrowed. Foolishly, he’d dropped the facade of bookkeeper and reverted to interrogator too early in their conversation.

“Why does a man who has the face of a brawler also have the diction of a peer?” She countered his question with one of her own.

Formidable. Girls were hard and formidable.

Juliet opened the door with one hand, staring at him over her shoulder. “I am off to the clinic, but when I get back—”

“Oh, Miss Peterson. That burning in my chest is your fault. You set me aflame with your touch,” a man crooned in the shop out front. “Won’t you bring me back to your treatment room and... quench my fire?”

Thorne quickly followed Juliet out of the office.

A crowd of customers chuckled at the young man who stood before Lucy, holding one hand to his chest while squeezing Lucy’s arm with the other.

“Your flames are not my fault, but yours,” Lucy retorted, pulling at the man’s grip.

Thorne started forward but Juliet put a hand to his chest to stop him.

“Let Lucy take care of herself,” she said quietly.

Thorne paused at Juliet’s order but kept his gaze fixed to where the man touched Lucy.

“I’ve told you, Mr. Johnson, to spend less time at the pub and more time learning your lines.” Any irritation that had been present in Lucy’s voice suddenly disappeared, and instead of fighting the young man, she leaned in toward him with a coquettish air.

“Did you not tell me your next role will make you a rival of William Macready? You cannot play Hamlet if you are forever belching and thumping at your chest,” Lucy said.

Johnson loosened his grip as he turned to smile at the crowd around him. “Indeed, the opening night of Hamlet at the Covent Garden is just next week, and I promise you it will be talked about for years to come. I doubt even Macready could rival my performance as Guildenstern. Mr. Simon Titlinger from the Times will be there to review it.”

A few of the older women clapped, and one of the younger girls fluttered her eyelashes at him.

“Now, wait your turn, Mr. Johnson, and I will mix you up a tonic. Mind, it won’t work if you keep drinking your dinners.” Lucy detached herself from Johnson’s hold and smiled benevolently at him.

A tonic . Perhaps that would ease the burning sensation Thorne felt in his own chest as he watched Lucy flirt her way across the crowded floor to help customers in much the same manner as Genny used to carve a path through a party on the few occasions they went out together before he realized that men weren’t staring at him with envy, but with avarice—before Thorne understood that nothing he did would ever change Genny’s need for attention from a crowd.

“I see Miss Peterson is more than skilled at taking care of herself,” he muttered as he turned back to the office, stalking past Juliet and roughly pulling open the top desk drawer in search of his spectacles.

“What is that supposed to mean?” Juliet demanded.

Thorne regarded Juliet, who had followed him inside, hands fisted beneath her fraying cotton gloves.

“Simply that Miss Peterson does not seem to need help when it comes to pleasing her male cust—oof!”

A foot or more shorter than him, Juliet nevertheless had enough momentum to push Thorne back against his desk with her forefinger after bursting across the office.

“What is she supposed to do?” Her voice, low but intense, turned her words into snakes of derision. “What are any of us supposed to do when men become forward and belligerent? Toss them out of the shop?”

Thorne opened his mouth only to emit another oof when Juliet poked him a second time.

“Then we earn reputations as shrews, so men who come in are poorly disposed toward us, if they come in at all. We are apothecaries, Mr. Thorne. We must care for our customers—our paying customers—even if they’re ill-mannered boors.”

“Does no one speak up?” he asked, unable to believe no one would intervene should a man become too forward.

“Of course not. Whether we have earned it or not, women apothecaries are not considered gentlewomen who need protection from boisterous men. We are classed together with shopkeepers and barmaids. Where are you from, Mr. Thorne, that this must needs be explained to you?”

Juliet dropped her finger as Sadie hurried in.

“Do you like these ribbons?” Sadie asked.

Thorne knew that opinions regarding ribbons, no matter how positive, would be met with disbelief, but he still told Sadie they made all the difference in the world.

She sniffed and turned to Juliet.

“Are these the kind the girls at Madame’s might wear?” she asked.

Juliet turned Sadie around by the shoulders and made a show of examining the strips of gold silk woven through her braids. One of the braids was crooked, and Thorne longed to fix it, but they were running later than he liked.

“I cannot speak to how the girls wear their hair at Madame’s nowadays, but you look pretty. The color suits you.”

Thorne nodded his thanks to Juliet as Sadie twirled twice and then pushed him toward the door.

“We must hurry,” she reminded him. “Remember Mrs. Merkle always said you have only one chance to make a good first impression.”

Indeed, Mrs. Merkle had many sensible sayings, most of which she’d cross-stitched and framed. Still, the humorless little widow had been kind to Sadie and took her influence over the girl seriously.

Outside, someone shouted something, and the crowd joked in response. Lucy’s laugh floated above them like a piece of silk caught in the wind.

Tonic aside, the burning sensation in his chest had subsided somewhat by the time Thorne and Sadie were nearly to the school. It had a name, that sensation, but Thorne would not use it. Nor would he meet Juliet’s gaze when he returned to the apothecary, ignoring the censure in her eyes.

Instead, he shut the door to the office, pulled out the oldest of the accounting ledgers, and sank gratefully into the mesmerizing world of double-entry bookkeeping.

—

Lucy breathed in the steam of her tea while massaging her temples. David and Juliet were bickering quietly while doing the washing up, and the sound of their voices plucked at the headache.

She was behind again in the shop. A young mother with a sick child had appeared just as she was closing, her eyes round with fear. Lucy had dropped everything to examine the baby’s yellowed eyes and sunken chest, and it didn’t look good. The woman had taken the baby to a physician who’d diagnosed unbalanced humors and subjected the baby to a bleeding. Instead of getting better, the child’s condition had grown worse.

While Lucy agreed with the diagnosis, she and Juliet were of the mind that children should never be bled. They did not have enough blood to make a difference, and the treatment caused more pain and suffering than it was worth. Lucy had spent precious hours soothing the mother and educating her on keeping the baby well fed and clean.

This was the most difficult part of her work, and the reason she often sent such women to see Juliet at the clinic. Juliet and Mrs. Sweet were constantly educating themselves about the newest scientific discoveries. Lucy hadn’t the time anymore to stay current, and besides that, she had too soft a heart to tell mothers the truth.

The truth was that most apothecaries could give relief from pain but could not cure the diseases that plagued the poor of London. Cholera, typhoid, consumption—while she had a theory as to how these diseases were spread, Lucy had no way to definitively cure them.

Her fellow male students may have had confidence in their skill, but Lucy knew that they were stumbling about in the dark. Women like those of Athena’s Retreat were needed to break away from traditional practices and find new treatments.

“I am traveling to Bath tomorrow.”

David’s announcement dropped like a stone in the kitchen. Juliet made a noise of disbelief, and Lucy stared at her brother, waiting for him to tell her it was a joke.

“What do you mean?” Lucy asked when David continued drying dishes as though he’d said nothing of import. “You cannot go to Bath. Juliet just said at dinner she might well be staying over at the clinic for the rest of the week. How am I to run the shop?”

David flashed his smile that had lured countless men and women into his orbit, but his sisters were immune. Still, the way he tipped his head and hitched the smile up on the left to create an extra dimple was second nature to David, and he persisted, even knowing it wouldn’t help.

“Lucy.”

Lucy’s teeth ached at the false sweetness in his tone. David leaned against the sink and threw the damp cloth over his shoulder.

“I’ve told you I have a business opportunity.”

“Can you at least give us some details? Opportunity. What does that mean?” Juliet pulled the cloth from David’s shoulder and dried her hands.

“It means nothing is final,” David replied. The self-conscious smile fell away from his face as he straightened, genuine pleasure lighting his ocean-blue eyes. “I’m so close, though. Let me wait until I’m certain to show you, show everyone what I can do.”

His voice broke on the last word, and a wave of resentment flooded through Lucy. Why had her father left the apothecary to her, the oldest, instead of to his son? If only he’d lived longer or written a letter with an explanation.

David believed Papa had found him a disappointment. He’d had no desire to apprentice at the apothecary, and instead loved socializing and thinking up ways to make money. Neither of their parents had been comfortable with David’s fluid attraction to men and women and found his interest in money to be somewhat sinful. Whatever ideas David came up with to increase revenue, his father would immediately dismiss.

“We are not here to profit, we are here to serve,” their father would say.

Easy to say when times were good and folks had coin. Since their parents’ death, the poor of the East End were growing poorer. Families who could no longer make a living from crafting or farming had streamed into London. They lived six, seven, sometimes ten to a room in sickness-filled tenements, and when faced with spending a spare pence to quell a pain, were more likely to spend it on a cup of gin than an ounce or two of tonic.

In the beginning, David had been determined to help the apothecary grow, but unlike Juliet and Lucy, he had no affinity for medicine. While he could persuade a housewife to buy an impractical ointment for the wrinkles beneath her eyes, he did not have the stomach to listen to that same woman describe the fungus between her toes.

As his attention toward the apothecary had waned, he’d taken to hanging round the coffee shops near the London Exchange, listening to the plans of daring financiers and thrill-seeking adventurers.

Men who thought well of him. Unlike their father.

Lucy’s guilt left her mute, and David accepted her silence as his due. Juliet, practically asleep on her feet, let the matter rest as well. What good would come of their circular arguments? David could leave tomorrow, and no one would fault him.

A man needed a purpose, their father had told them. Why he’d left his son without one was a mystery.

Once again, Lucy spent the haunch of the night in her workspace, stopping every so often when she heard a creak on the stairs or the floorboards above.

She was waiting, of course, like a fool.

Thorne had not spoken to her today.

After he returned from dropping Sadie at school, he’d burrowed himself in the dusty ledgers and didn’t come out until it was time to fetch the girl back again. Lucy had greeted the duo on their return, and Sadie was happy enough to tell her about the amazements to be found in Madame’s classrooms. While they did not have glass eyeballs, there were cages full of mice and jars filled with preserved pig organs.

As Sadie described the contents of the jars in depth, Lucy tried catching Thorne’s eye, but he deliberately looked anywhere except at her.

He must be disgusted with her.

She’d practically thrown herself into his arms last night, driven by her need for comfort and spurred on even more by the dark magnetism that hovered over him.

The rest of her sleepless night and throughout the day, irritants like that blowhard Johnson bothered Lucy more than usual, and she’d started to second-guess her treatment of the jaundiced baby. Over dinner, Juliet had listened and agreed with the treatment, but what if Lucy had missed a clue in her examination? Had she balanced the mother’s expectations with enough compassion and honesty?

“There is a crate in the hallway by the back door. Do you need it moved?”

So far gone into her worries, Lucy hadn’t heard Thorne’s approach.

She turned around, her hands clasped in front of her chest as though her body had already made the decision to plead with him to come closer.

No more than a second passed before her hands fell to her sides, the slight disdain on Thorne’s face leaving her limp and cold.

“Please do not worry yourself over it. David said he would do it before he leaves on a journey tomorrow. You are not here to perform the tasks of a shop boy, Mr. Thorne.”

Was her tone light enough? Her limp smile convincing?

Thorne remained standing. Unable to translate his silence, Lucy turned back around to the mess in front of her, pretending to be fascinated by it.

“Where is your brother going?”

A sigh escaped her. “Bath.”

“Who will help you with the shop?”

This time she held her breath, keeping her shoulders from sagging even more.

“Katie Quinlavin will be here, of course. We will manage just fine together,” she said to him. “She has a way with the rowdier customers. It helps that her father is well-known in the neighborhood as a hothead, so most folk won’t push too far with her for fear of him. And she’s a hard worker despite her aversion to certain bodily fluids.”

The girl was smart as well as confident. Her weak stomach left her without any desire to apprentice as an apothecary, but she was quick with sums and understood the basics of chemistry and botany. Both Lucy and Juliet had tried to convince Katie’s father to send her to an academy in Yorkshire for gifted girls, but he needed her help supporting the family. Lucy suspected that Katie didn’t press him on it because she was being courted by a young man with a steady job at the docks.

Someday, Katie would learn that, unlike men, an education stayed with you forever.

Thorne leaned back as though pushed by an invisible wind, then lurched forward. His hands had been in his coat pockets, and now he drew them out for her to examine. Lucy’s heart stuttered a confused rhythm of back and forth.

“The capsaicin,” he said. “It helps.”

She reached for his hands without removing her gaze from his face, desperate to see behind his rigid jaw and slight scowl.

Thorne scowled a lot .

Some stupid, girlish part of her brain found that attractive.

This was why Lucy had no time for biology. The whys of such primordial urges were lost on her. Chemistry was the only science that made sense. You bring two elements together and create a third. What you put in comes out in another form.

Fascinating.

Men?

Just plain confusing. For example, why might his scent of wool and paper, and a hint of the November winds he’d been walking through outside, make her head spin and bring a flush to her cheeks?

Embarrassed at the carnal direction of her thoughts once again, Lucy examined his hands. The swelling had gone down, revealing more of the bones beneath the skin.

“Did you perhaps punch rocks for a living before working at Tierney’s?” she asked.

The scratchy rumbling coming from his chest must have been a chuckle, because a tiny smile flitted across his face.

“Men who choose to fight as a profession are stupid,” he said. “It makes sense that our heads are hard as rocks, for that’s what fills them.”

The low light cast him in shadow, leaving only the tiniest glint in his eyes as a hint that he watched her. The wash of darkness softened his chin and made his cheeks appear gaunt, giving him a hungry look. A shiver rolled down her spine and curled itself between her thighs.

“Did you ever fight here in London?” she asked.

He flinched. “Once or twice.”

Lucy squeezed his hands quickly, then stepped back. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have pried.”

Thorne stared at his hands, then at her. “Folks recognize me now and again. Not so much these days.” He shrugged, the rustle of cloth against his back the only sound except their breath. “Up until now my assignments haven’t put me in company with the sort who frequent prizefights. If I am to investigate Duncan Rider, I suppose I should be ready.”

Two thoughts warred with each other as Lucy reflected on his words, so she allowed Thorne to choose which to answer or deflect depending on his mood.

“Duncan is the sort who goes to prizefights? Were you famous?”

He peered past her shoulder, then walked over to the counter and bent to smell the mixture she’d almost finished.

“I’ve been talking to the merchants on the same street as Rider and Son. Duncan has made good money from his lozenges and along the way acquired an introduction to a set of young aristocrats with more money than brains,” Thorne said. “Would you say he was a gambler?”

“Oh, yes,” Lucy answered. “There is nothing Duncan enjoys more than taking a risk.”

For wasn’t that the draw when he used his kisses to get her to agree to lie with him four months ago? The idea that someone could—and eventually did—walk in on them was exciting for him. So exciting he’d made promises to her that he’d no intention of keeping.

When she’d confronted him, Duncan repeated the sort of nonsense he’d heard from the Guardians. Lucy was not the sort of woman a man married . Not once she’d given her virtue away. Especially not since she’d enjoyed it.

“I was famous enough in my time.” Thorne answered her second question. “That’s in my past.”

How she longed to pry him open and see inside his head to his secrets. Carrying himself with the surety of a man who had won and lost important fights and learned something each time, Thorne moved through space as though he wore an invisible extra layer of protection. A buffer between himself and the petty hurts of the world.

How many times must one fall to learn to stand so straight and uncompromising?

“David taught me to punch once,” she confided. “My littlest finger was swollen for two weeks. You are lucky you still have the mobility in the joints that you do.”

He stared at his hands with a hint of disbelief, turning them over and over as if searching for the lie in her words.

“I was tempted to try a punch today and risk a broken finger,” she muttered.

Thorne’s head snapped up, and one of his scowls graced his face.

Those scowls would be the death of her.

“Was it that actor this morning?” he asked.

“Oh, Johnson?” She waved the thought away. “His sort is simple to manage. You appeal to their ego and encourage them to talk about themselves.”

The jaundiced baby and her undernourished mother were still taking up space in Lucy’s head. The physician who bled the child should have given the mother a more honest estimation of the outcome; instead it was left to Lucy. She wanted to tell Thorne about it, confide her worries and see if his scowl might render them impotent.

“There was...” Lucy’s voice thinned to nothing at Thorne’s expression.

Cold.

Remote.

Uninterested.

Would she ever grow out of the childish notion that a man could want her mind before he wanted her body?

“I have wasted too much time,” she said abruptly, then resumed her work. The camphor stung her eyes, and she inhaled the scent of wounding and healing. “Good night, Mr. Thorne.”

His retreating voice rolled along the floorboards and crept up her ankles to her spine.

“Good night, Lucy.”