Chemistry of Magic: Unexpected Magic Book Five (Unexpected Magic #5)(42)
Together, they staggered up the stairs in the illumination of their one lamp.
“We are very strange newlyweds,” he said as they approached their chamber. “I am sorry that I have not provided a well set-up estate with a full staff for you, but even my own country house is as bad as this. We’ve not lived there in years.”
“We didn’t plan a real marriage,” she reminded him. She didn’t know what constituted a real marriage, but she was fairly certain theirs lacked the basic foundation of love. “Besides, I’ve never wanted more than what we have here. I love the lectures and libraries in the city, but I’ll never be a social butterfly. Here, I can be eccentric as I like, and as long as we pay the merchants, no one complains. And if Bridey allows me to use the abbey. . . It’s perfect. Or will be,” she amended.
It would be a solitary life once he was gone, she admitted. Was it wrong to pretend that desolate future wouldn’t happen? Or should she shield herself from caring for this man—whom she already cared about too much. She had never been good at emotional conundrums.
A single lamp glowed in their shared chamber. Towels and soaps and their robes had been laid out on the bed. A tin tub, scrubbed and shiny, waited in front of a low coal fire. On hooks over the embers hung buckets of water keeping warm. More pitchers of water waited on the washstand.
“This is almost like being at home,” Emilia exclaimed, giving up her fears of the future for the delight of the moment. “Shall you go first before I use my scented soaps?”
Foolish question. Even exhausted as he had to be, her handsome husband offered a lascivious smirk and reached for her bodice fastenings. In the firelight his hair glittered like gold, and she was struck by a rush of desire.
“You will overexert yourself into an early grave,” she tried to warn him, although the other half of her, the animal part that lusted, only half-meant it.
“Do I prefer quality to quantity of life?” he said in a rough-edged rasp, while releasing her bodice. Even his voice served to excite her. “That’s an old question. At this moment, I choose quality,”
Quality, Emilia thought later, much later, after they’d soaped and splashed, and she now clung to her husband’s neck and wet hair while he hugged her waist and bottom and pushed deep inside her. Quality should last forever, not be ripped away by the fragility of human flesh.
Even as the now-familiar quakes shook her, a tear rolled down her cheek.
It would be devastating to become too attached to this virile, exciting man, only to lose him.
The next morning, Dare watched his wife dress in old clothes for a day working with her herbs and his medicine—and a sadness wrapped around his heretofore nonexistent heart. Emilia was so dynamic, so brilliant, and so. . . Remembering last night’s lovemaking, he considered simply putting a knife through his heart and dying while still in bliss. Consumption was a vile disease, and he did not want to diminish any of her brilliance with nursing his wasting useless self.
But he hadn’t fixed the railroad problem or created an heir, so he couldn’t die yet.
“Are you still feeling nauseated?” she asked, out of the blue, fastening her own bodice without need of her invisible lady’s maid.
Dare thought about it a second. “I don’t think so. The pain is still there, though. Perhaps I need to break my fast first.”
She nodded understanding. “I am hoping it is the medicine that is causing the pain. I don’t want to dose you with unnecessary medications until we know.”
“You are not a trained physician,” he pointed out rudely, needing to put a distance between them. “I’ll travel to Edinburgh and find someone who has actual experience if I must.”
“Take a written list of my medicinal ingredients for stomach pain and nausea if you go,” she said with a shrug. “See what the experts say.”
But he could tell he’d hurt her. He felt like an ogre, but it had to be said. It was bad enough that real physicians were poisoning him with proven formulas.
After they ate, Emilia was the first one out the door. Growling in exasperation, Dare followed her. He unlocked the workshop door, lit a lantern, and let her precede him. The windows hadn’t been washed, and the gloomy day did little to illuminate the interior, but he held the lamp over the dark corner where he’d left the medicine-filled dish.
Dead bugs littered the dish and the ground around it. If mice had drunk from it, they’d crawled off to die elsewhere. Or recover. He’d have to deliberately poison one in a cage to know how much it took to kill a mouse—Emilia would probably kill him for the suggestion.
“What the devil is in that stuff?” he asked, lifting the saucer and grimacing at the contents.
“Bug killer,” she answered pertly. “You have been drinking bug killer.”
“I’m sure my physician will appreciate that report.” Feeling murderous, Dare lifted a few cockroaches and carried them to his table. “We’ll divide the bottles up. You can try killing weeds, and I’ll see if I can discover what kills bugs.”
She chortled just a little, although her brow was creased with worry. “Very useful ingredient if it kills everything noxious. I know quite a few plants that are deadly. So far, I’ve not killed any bugs with them.”
“Give me a list of deadly plants, and if you have any specimens of them, give me those, too. I’ll see if I can develop tests to match them against the medicine after I distill the water in it.”