“Will—”
He met my eyes for the first time.
“Ah, Bee. Don’t look at me like that,” he said, managing a shadow of his old sly smile. “I won’t have it. I’ll send you right back out on the street.”
“But—is it—?”
“Just a touch of consumption,” he said. “It’s trying to kill me, but it will have to hurry if it wants to beat the Prussians.”
He let out a short laugh that quickly turned into another cough. When it had finished with him, he sat down by the fire. Not on a chair, as there were none in the room, but on the bare floorboards.
“Do make yourselves comfortable,” said Will, with a grand sweep of one hand while the other tucked his handkerchief away again. “That may seem a difficult thing to do, but you’ll find the floor quite pleasant once you’re very tired of standing.”
I went forward and sank down across from him. I untied my bonnet and pulled it off, holding it in front of me. I fiddled with the ribbons and forced back the panic flooding through me.
“Will—” I began again.
“So you didn’t know where else to go,” Will interrupted. “But last I knew you were still in France. It seems I’ve missed a few rather significant developments in the life of Theosebeia Hope. And you know that isn’t a story I like to fall behind on.”
I smiled, even though my heart was heavy as lead. I never could resist smiling when he set his mind to making me.
“I sent you a letter,” I said. “You didn’t get it?”
Will reached into his front pocket and took out a letter—my letter. My pulse quickened. He kept it in his pocket, just where I kept his.
“This one?” he asked. “I got it, Bee, but I hadn’t the faintest idea what to make of it! Your mother is mad? You’re leaving France? I thought it was some joke.”
“Not a joke,” I said, and my smile faltered at the thought of all the miserable things I had to relate. “I don’t know where to start.”
“You left France, it seems,” prompted Will. “Why? I thought we agreed you should stay and bring down the ancien régime.”
I smiled again, wryly this time. Will liked to joke as though I were even more a revolutionary than he, though in truth I was a great deal less. I’d never thought about politics carefully until Will came, and the seven months he’d been with us hadn’t been quite long enough for him to convince me.
“We never agreed on that,” I said. “And anyway, you left.”
“What an unfair way to put it,” said Will. “I didn’t leave, I was unceremoniously thrown out. And if you’ll recall, that was quite as much your fault as mine.”
A flush crept up my cheeks. Dominic watched me, a slight frown on his face.
“In any case,” I said, to change the subject. “The Revolution doesn’t seem to need our help.”
“That’s what Lafayette wants you to think. The Revolution’s all done, plebs, pack up your pitchforks and let the liberal aristocrats take it from here!” He coughed again, deep and painful, but kept talking afterward as if there had been no interruption. “But the people won’t have it, you know. A citizen king and a constitution written by rich men? The Revolution isn’t finished yet, not even close to it. You’ll see.”
“A Jacobin alchemist,” muttered Dominic. He sat down next to me.
“An excellent summary of me.” Will’s brilliant smile moved to Dominic, turning unfriendly. “It seems you know me completely now, but I know nothing about you except that you seem to have gotten my Bee into trouble.”
“Your Bee?” asked Dominic.
“He didn’t get me into trouble,” I said hastily. “It wasn’t his fault.”
“Don’t tell me it was yours, Bee,” said Will. “I won’t believe you.”
“No, it wasn’t my fault, either. If anything it was my father’s.”
“Your father?” Will asked. “You mean the Oxford fellow? I thought you’d never met.”
“We hadn’t,” I said. “The Comte sent me to Oxford after—well—”
The scent of sulfur came back to me, and my throat seemed to constrict like my mother’s hands were around it again. For a moment I couldn’t go on.
“How far are you?” asked Dominic abruptly, nodding toward the brazier over the fire.
“Far?” Will asked. “Do you even know what you’re asking?”
“I know what alchemy looks like. Have you made the White Elixir?” Dominic continued.
“The White Elixir?” repeated Will, incredulous. “The substance that turns all metals into silver? Do you think I would be hiding away in this hovel if I had?”
“We did,” said Dominic. “Or almost did. With Thea’s help.”
Will’s mouth fell open, and his hostility dropped with it.
“You—you made the White Elixir?” He turned to me. “Bee?”
I swallowed and drew a shaky breath. “They did.”
“But then—” Will seemed to grow taller, even as he sat. “But that’s the final step before the Philosopher’s Stone!”
“It is,” agreed Dominic. “And Thea got close—”
“Got close!” exclaimed Will. His eyes flashed with a brilliance almost like before. “My God! Do you mean you know how to make it?”
“I don’t,” Dominic said, glancing at me. “But…”
“Will, listen,” I said. “It isn’t as simple as that. There was a … a problem.”
A problem. I winced at the feebleness of the understatement. My mother was insane. Professore Bentivoglio was dead. Dominic and I were both fugitives from the law. It was more than a problem. It was a curse.
“The process causes madness,” said Dominic. “Thea’s mother went mad in France in the last stages. Then someone else, in Oxford—a colleague of Mr. Vellacott—he went mad as well.”
“Mad?” The avid light in Will’s eyes dimmed. “Truly mad? You said so in your letter, but I didn’t think…”
I swallowed hard, then nodded. “She was gone, Will, completely gone.”
“You don’t mean—”
“She attacked me,” I said. “She nearly killed me.”
“What?” Will’s eyes widened in horror. “My God, Bee!”
“But that isn’t all,” I
