Page 8 of The Love Remedy (The Damsels of Discovery #1)

8

The thin blond clerk at the patent office had an underbite that gave him the look of a man unfulfilled and forever searching out something better.

That particular piece of fancy drifted through Thorne’s head as he thanked the clerk for his time. The clerk could not be bothered with a response. He simply sniffed with disdain as if Thorne, too, had somehow disappointed him.

No new medicinal patents had been filed since the roaring success of Rider’s Lozenges, a red-and-white tin of which sat on the clerk’s desk beside a cup of tea gone scummy. After leaving the patent office, Thorne reviewed the list he’d made of apothecaries large enough to manufacture Lucy’s croup salve in large doses.

For two days, he visited apothecaries across London. Beginning with Rider’s, he spiraled out through the capital, inquiring at each establishment whether they had a cure for croup. He’d learned that there were as many opinions on how to cure croup as there were stars in the sky.

There were also entirely different means of measurements in these places.

When Lucy gave him a list of what she believed had constituted her croup salve ingredients, Thorne had been taken aback to find teacups, wineglasses, and even breakfast cups were universally accepted computations. In addition to these commonsense measurements, he learned about drachms and scruples, both fluid and solid, as well as minims.

Some apothecaries were little more than opium dens, continuing in the tradition of pharmaceutical “quackery” that plagued apothecaries in the last century.

Since the Society of Apothecaries was granted permission in 1815 to establish a professional system of education and registration, standards had become more rigorous in most instances.

None of the apothecaries he visited offered Thorne a salve with similar ingredients to those Lucy had told him were in hers. Whoever had taken the formula for Lucy’s salve was keeping it to themselves for now.

Thorne had compiled a list of suspects, and while it made sense to continue investigating Rider and other rival apothecaries, he also needed to rule out David Peterson. Thorne didn’t fully trust the handsome young man who swanned about the shop entertaining customers rather than applying himself to accounting—no matter that he was Lucy’s brother. While there had been periods of fastidious recordkeeping and budgeting, everything had been neglected in the past three months, resulting in a tangled mass of debts and payments that led to more questions than answers.

What was this business opportunity David was willing to abandon Lucy for? Did it have anything to do with the three large payments he’d clandestinely made to a Mr. W. R. Wilcox that Thorne had uncovered yesterday with no corresponding invoice? Wilcox was not an uncommon name, but Thorne had sent word to Winthram to see if he might find something out.

He was now approaching their designated meeting location.

“ Dinoponera gigantea ?” Voices floated from behind the front door.

“Yes, sir.”

“Gigantic...?”

“Ants. Giant ants.”

“Jesus, give me strength.”

Thorne knocked on the half-opened door and stuck his head inside the library of Beacon House, the home of Arthur and Violet Kneland. The cozy chamber held a large polished wooden desk, and by a small fire sat two men, one much younger than the other.

“Mr. Thorne. Thank you for meeting me here.” Winthram stood and ushered Thorne into the room, pulling a chair over so that Thorne could join them. Kneland rose as well and gave Thorne his hand.

A cart sat to the side, and Winthram poured tea and filled a plate with shortbread. Thorne accepted both and closed his eyes with pleasure—the shortbread at Beacon House tasted like lemons and contentment.

Behind the house, there once was a series of outbuildings and a small courtyard. Violet Kneland, the former Lady Greycliff, used her first husband’s money to convert those outbuildings into workshops and corridors that led to the building directly behind them on the next street over.

Thorne had been to the public rooms of Athena’s Retreat when he came to interview young Winthram about working for Tierney what’s in your heart is important. His favorite verse is from the first book of Samuel, ‘The Lord seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart.’?”

The girl sighed. “I was going to do a cross-stitch sampler of it, but Mrs. Merkle moved before we could start it together. Do you do cross-stitch, Miss Peterson?”

“I do not,” she told the girl. “The only time I use a needle and thread is to stitch up a wound.”

A curious gleam lit in Sadie’s eyes. “Doesn’t the needle make more blood? Do people scream when you do it?”

What Lucy should be doing was mixing her cures and helping Juliet out front. Or encouraging Sadie to read her textbook or pursue her cross-stitch plans. She should go see what ailed Mr. Gentry today before he came back here for her.

Instead, Lucy opened the anatomy book to the detailed etchings of the epidermal system and answered Sadie’s every question about stitches and debridement.

Because sometimes women deserved to have fun.