“And yet what?” I snapped. My patience was frayed. Had I been brought here, subjected to abuse and threats, just to listen to Rahel express her disappointment in my character?
“And yet you fall victim to a worthless man with a handsome face just as easily as any other girl,” she said. “I should not like to think Miss Wollstonecraft is wrong. Yet here you are, forced into servitude out of nothing but misplaced devotion.”
“I am sorry to have disappointed you,” I said coldly.
“Help me understand, Theosebeia,” she said. “How does a young woman such as yourself choose to throw herself away on a man? If you were not raised to it, then are we as a sex simply doomed to this foolishness? Perhaps Rousseau is right, and we should accept it as our nature. Fashion ourselves into pleasing playthings.”
“I do not think so.”
“Something must have gone wrong,” said Rahel. “You were lonely, perhaps? Or simply so sheltered and innocent that you did not recognize a scoundrel when you saw one.”
“Will is not a scoundrel,” I said.
“If it was that, there is no easy cure,” said Rahel. “Except, I suppose, more experience with scoundrels.”
She glanced to the door, where Martin stood. I sat straighter in my chair and gripped the arms.
“That isn’t necessary,” I said. “I am perfectly aware of the failings of men.”
“My dear, you misunderstand me,” said Rahel.
“I understand that you are threatening me,” I said. “Though I do not understand why.”
“I do not threaten you,” said Rahel with a dismissive flick of her fingers.
“If you dislike scoundrels so much, why do you employ him?” I didn’t need to point to Martin. Rahel knew who I meant. Her eyes lit up as though I had asked exactly the question she had hoped for.
“Because I know the use of scoundrels,” she said, bending toward me. “They are to be employed, as you say, channeled. If you had some purpose for Will, I could not fault you for your association with him. But instead, he makes use of you. You suffer for him. And you will get nothing for it. Nothing.”
Her voice was rising, and so was my pulse. I did not have to understand her anger to know it was dangerous.
“So what use is it to threaten you? You submit to worse than what Martin could do to you, and yet you submit to it willingly.”
“Tell me, then.” My knuckles whitened against the arms of the chair, but I kept my voice calm. “You bring me in here to chide or punish me for believing in Will, but you won’t tell me why I shouldn’t. Tell me—stop me, if you can. Or don’t tell me, and let me be.”
Rahel’s hot look turned cold. She placed a hand on top of her splayed-open book and curled her fingers against it.
“I want only to understand you, Theosebeia,” she said. “But it seems you don’t wish to understand yourself.”
A retort sprung to my lips, and then another one, but I kept them both back. I knew what she wanted to hear, but I would not tell her that I believed Will a scoundrel, that he was not worthy of my love. And she would not, perhaps could not, tell me why she wished me to believe it.
There was a loud knock at the door. Martin opened it, revealing Valentin.
“Excuse me, Fräulein, but I must take Miss Hope back to her work. The composition is smoking.”
I bolted up from my chair and went to the door. Martin stepped forward and placed a hand against my shoulder to halt me. I flinched away.
“The Fräulein has not dismissed you,” he said.
“Oh, let her go,” said Rahel. “We wouldn’t want her precious composition to catch fire. It might burn up the library.”
I pushed past Martin and hurried out of the room. When Valentin shut the door behind us, I allowed myself to shudder.
I walked quickly, Valentin following after me.
“What did you do to the composition?” I asked sharply. “It shouldn’t be smoking.”
“It isn’t,” said Valentin.
I stopped, glancing at him in question. “You lied to Rahel?”
“I thought it was time to collect you,” he said simply.
Once we returned to the library, I resumed my place by the fire, and Valentin his chair. He looked at me with a carefully blank expression.
“What did she want?” Valentin asked.
I considered this. “To inspire me to discover whatever it is that neither of you will tell me,” I said, and then sighed. “Or perhaps merely to toy with me.”
Valentin frowned and said nothing. I went back to work, pushing this new fear to the back of my mind, where it joined the others.
I worked as long and as attentively as I could, until I was wrung out, exhausted, and slightly sick. Valentin left to bring me food and I sank into the tall armchair where Will had sat, tortured and trembling. I tried to push that image away as I pushed away Mother’s voice, and to remember him as he’d been in France, hale and handsome and happy. Full of dreams and plans and ideas. There had always been so much to talk about. Not just alchemy, but what alchemy could be for. He had read all the scientific texts, and other books my mother never bothered with. Philosophy, politics, literature. I didn’t know, until Will showed me, that I would love reading Rousseau and Voltaire, dissecting their arguments, debating their merits with him. He understood my world completely. But more than that, he expanded it. I tried to remember that feeling of horizons widening. Of finding that the world was bigger than I knew, and that I
