Chemistry of Magic: Unexpected Magic Book Five (Unexpected Magic #5)(54)

She couldn’t tell if her husband’s fierce frown was for her or for Crenshaw, but she was fairly certain it wasn’t because Dare was feeling bad. He seemed flushed with health this morning as he washed and dressed. She knew he usually called James about now to shave him, but he seemed more intent on what she was telling him. She thought. At least he wasn’t telling her this wasn’t a woman’s affair.

“Weathersby is one of the bankers I spoke to about the estate funds,” he told her. “He was the one who claimed Crenshaw was a gentleman your grandfather trusted. I’ll have your executor sue Weathersby and Crenshaw for conspiracy and theft. But it is this belief that the house was condemned for the railroad that has me more concerned than the money.”

“I am positive my father would not have authorized the sale,” she said to reassure him. “I think Mr. Weathersby may be as much of a thief as Crenshaw and is just taking funds for an investment he can’t afford otherwise.”

“Very possible. Pascoe is the man to find out. But. . .”

He hesitated so long that she came out of the dressing room to study him with worry. “But?”

He sat down on the bed’s edge. “Bridey is right. If we are being honest, I admit to ambition, sometimes to excess. I have invested a good part of my wealth in a railroad consortium building a line into Harrogate.” He looked up with a guilty expression. “Our plans were laid out when the abbey lands were still in the Crown coffers. Now that they belong to Pascoe, we cannot finish the track. I stand to lose everything I invested.”

“You are behind the railroad going through Alder?” Shocked, she couldn’t absorb the immensity of what he implied.

“A railroad,” he explained. “Railroads are essential. But we never planned a track through your land.”

“But you planned one through Pascoe’s lands and you didn’t tell him?” Outraged, she wanted to fling him out the window. Had he been a stranger, she might have attempted to do so. But this was Dare. She had known his ambitions when she married him. “Were those your surveyors that Mr. Ives-Madden saw?”

“Not mine,” he said forcefully. “I’ve ascertained that.”

“So then it’s all right?” she asked in relief. “No one will be destroying our homes and fields?”

To her dismay, he shook his head negatively.

“Even if I wanted to, which I don’t, I can’t throw away investor money by giving up now. And even if we did, there is another rail line to the north that wants to connect with Harrogate. Alder is in their direct path, so they will go through here one way or another.”

Emilia fisted her hand over her middle. “So no matter what, we lose our homes?”

Dare shook his head. “The abbey fields make the best route, true. We’ve bought up land that is going to waste on either side of them. There is an alternative, if Pascoe won’t sell.” He held her gaze. “The tracks could conceivably go through some of your unused property. If Weathersby’s association is considering that, then they are also talking to the northern rail line.”

Emilia felt sick. If Pascoe refused to sell his property, Dare would go broke and his family would starve. If Dare’s investors didn’t lay track, then the men in Harrogate would—right through her land.

None of them had any understanding of what that meant. She gathered her courage and regarded him stonily. “I have no unused property,” she informed him. “After we eat, I will show you.”



“It’s swamp,” Dare declared, studying the wasteland land he’d considered an alternative to Pascoe’s. He felt his boots sinking into soggy peat. “You could make a great deal of money selling off this worthless property. Why would you say no? Think what you could do to the cottage, the servants you could hire, the laboratory you could build. . .”

Here was a solution to their land problem! He could sell the consortium this swamp. Even if they had to build a trestle over it, they’d still make a fortune.

“I won’t need a laboratory if I lose this land,” his bewildering wife protested, lifting her old skirts above a pair of old boots and descending an embankment with the nimbleness of a mountain goat.

Dare was fairly certain Emilia was not insane. Odd, perhaps, misinformed, no doubt, but not insane. So she believed this swamp was more important than her studies. It would behoove him to figure out why or spend the rest of his limited life believing he’d married a crazy woman who would see his family starve over a swamp.

He slid down after her, catching her arm as they reached the bottom. She tugged him to a stop and pointed at their feet.

“We are walking on Sir Harry’s garden. It’s overgrown, but there should be stepping stones so we needn’t crush the mosses.” She crouched down and brushed aside ferns until she found a solid rock. With a gardener’s expertise, she produced a pair of secateurs from her apron pocket and began clearing a path.

“It’s a bog filled with bog plants,” Dare argued, gazing at the lush greenery. He hadn’t spent much time on his father’s very small estate. He barely knew hay from alfalfa. But he knew a bog when he saw one.

She pointed to clumps of rounded leaves. “Liverwort, dozens of different species, some unknown anywhere else in the kingdom. Some species are excellent for improving blood circulation. Others are excellent for women who need it when they reach a certain age to balance out their ill humors. There’s another species further on which makes an excellent tonic. I was waiting for this fall to harvest it to see if it might give consumptives more strength to fight the disease. My grandfather spent his life importing new varieties, learning their properties.”